Torture Born Article in Print

My article "Torture Born: Representing Pregnancy and Abortion in Contemporary Survival-Horror" is now in print in the latest issue of Sexuality and Culture (19:3, 2015)

Access the article here. If you do not have a subscription (or an institutional subscription) to the journal, a pre-print version of the article is available here.

Congratulations Doctor Taylor

I have just returned form Loughborough University where I had the pleasure of acting as external examiner for Tosha Taylor's viva. Tosha successfully defend her thesis 'American Captivity in Contemporary Horror Cinema’, passing with minor corrections. Congratulations Tosha.

More information on Tosha's research, see her Academia.edu page here.

Call for Book Proposals: Global Exploitation Cinemas

Series editors: 

Dr Johnny Walker (Northumbria, UK) / Dr Austin Fisher (Bournemouth, UK)

Global Exploitation Cinemas is a new book series from Bloomsbury Academic which publishes original monographs and edited volumes of around 80-100,000 words that explore the highly dynamic area of international "exploitation" film production. Encompassing a broad range of contexts, from industry to audiences to cultural history, it considers filmic trends and traditions, the work of specific directors, producers, stars and audiences.

Until relatively recently, the academic study of global exploitation cinemas often analysed films, not in light of their historical/social contexts or their contexts of production, reception and cultural afterlife but rather in (ahistorical) theoretical vacuums. And, while it would be unfair to claim that this approach characterises all research in this area, there is yet to be a book series dedicated to advancing the field of exploitation cinema studies in a way that contributes new and original knowledge.

Global Exploitation Cinemas, thus, seeks to a fill a void in the academic study of film history and provide a forum for the empirically-informed study of the exploitation film in all its guises. We welcome proposals from new and established scholars (we are currently prioritising monographs, but will gladly discuss edited volumes, too).

The series will formally launch in 2016 with Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42^nd Street, and Beyond (edited by Austin Fisher and Johnny Walker) and Disposable Passions: Vintage Pornography and the Material Legacies of Adult Cinema (by David Church).

Global Exploitation Cinemas also boasts an international editorial board:

·      Tejaswini Ganti (New York)

·      Joan Hawkins (Indiana)

·      Kevin Heffernan (Southern Methodist)

·      I. Q. Hunter (De Montfort)

·      Peter Hutchings (Northumbria)

·      Ernest Mathijs (British Columbia)

·      Constance Penley (UC Santa Barbara)

·      Eric Schaefer (Emerson College)

·      Dolores Tierney (Sussex)

·      Valerie Wee (National University of Singapore).

Please send full proposals (download the form at http://globalexploitationcinemas.weebly.com) and informal inquiries to bothjohnny.walker@northumbria.ac.uk and afisher@bournemouth.ac.uk.