Research

Kate Egan's current and ongoing research interests are in the areas of British film censorship, British cinema, the horror film, film genre study, cult cinema, audience and reception studies, and film collecting cultures (particularly relating to video and DVD). Current projects include a study of the local British censorship of The Devils and Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Biography

Dr Kate Egan is a lecturer in film studies. She came to Aberystwyth and the department in 2003, as a research assistant on the ESRC-funded The International Lord of the Rings Audience Project, and became a full-time lecturer in the department in 2006.

Teaching

FM31320 Cinema and Stardom

FM10120 Studying Film

FM30120 Analysing Film, Television and Media

FM20920 Film Genre

TFM1330 Film Culture

FM32920 Film Authorship

Supervisor of 3 PhDs:

An analysis of the role of memories in British football fandom (Edward Payne)

The reception and marketing of remakes of controversial films (Nia Edwards-Behi)

On Becoming Asian Auteurs: The Transnational Reputation Making Processes of Hong Kong’s Wong Kar Wai, Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and South Korea’s Kim Ki-duk (Wikanda Promkhuntong)

Publications

Books:

• (ed. with Sarah Thomas) Cult Film Stardom: Offbeat Attractions and Processes of Cultification (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
• The Evil Dead (London: Wallflower Press, 2011)
• Trash or Treasure?: Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters:

• (with Jamie Sexton), ‘Halloween (1978): The Marketing, Distribution, and Reception of a “Cult Film in Reverse”’ in Richard Nowell (ed.) Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema (London: Bloomsbury, Forthcoming).

• ‘The Women in White: Aesthetic and Thematic Uses of Costumes in Argento’s Films’ in Russ Hunter and Alexia Kannas (eds), The Cinema of Dario Argento (London: Wallflower Press, Forthcoming).

• ‘The Impact of Home Video’ in Julian Petley and Stevie Simkin (eds), Controversies: Histories and Debates in Film Controversy (London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

• ‘A Real Horror Star: Articulating the Authenticity of Ingrid Pitt’ in Kate Egan and Sarah Thomas (eds), Cult Film Stardom: Offbeat Attractions and Processes of Cultification (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
• (with Kerstin Leder), ‘The same old song?: Exploring conceptions of the ‘feelgood’ film in the talk of Mamma Mia!’s older viewers’ in Louise Fitzgerald and Melanie Williams (eds), Mamma Mia! The Movie: Exploring a Cultural Phenomenon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012)
• ‘The Evil Dead DVD commentaries, amateurishness and ‘bad film’ discourse’ in Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis (eds), B for Bad Cinema: Aesthetics, Politics and Cultural Value (New York: State University of New York Press, 2013).
• (with Martin Barker), ‘ The Books, the DVDs, the Extras, and Their Lovers’ in Martin Barker and Ernest Mathijs (eds), Watching the Lord of the Rings: The Story and Findings of a World Audience Project (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008).
• (with Martin Barker, Ernest Mathijs, Jamie Sexton, Russ Hunter, and Melanie Selfe), ‘Audiences and Receptions of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Cinema’, Report to the British Board of Film Classification on completion of funded research project, March 2007, available from: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/downloads/
• (with Martin Barker), ‘Rings Around the World: Notes on the Challenges, Problems and Possibilities of International Audience Projects’, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 3:2, Special Issue on International Audience Research (November 2006).
• ‘The Celebration of a “Proper Product”: Exploring the Residual Collectible through the “Video Nasty”’ in Charles R. Acland (ed.), Residual Media: Residual Technologies and Culture ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp. 200-221.
• ‘The Amateur Historian and the Electronic Archive: Identity, Power and the Function of Lists, Facts and Memories on “Video Nasty”-Themed Websites’, Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media, 3, Special Horror Issue (Spring 2003).

Additional Interests

Editorial Boards:

Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies.

Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media