Staff profile

I completed my BA in English literature at Newcastle University in 2015, for which I achieved First Class honours and chose to stay on to undertake my MA in Modern and Contemporary literature, which I completed in August of 2016 with distinction, before arriving in Durham to begin my doctorate.

My thesis situates the contemporary Superhero film within the context of 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror.’ Whereas much commentary and scholarship has tended to read the genre as a reflection of the ambivalence and uncertainty that characterises this period of recent US history, or indeed as a direct endorsement of the aggressive, right-wing, hetero-masculine rhetorics that framed the War on Terror, my project proposes an extensive reappraisal of the form. It argues that Superhero films can function as compelling sites of popular critique, providing rich imaginative spaces in which the political metanarratives that were constructed around 9/11 can be confronted. My research places a particular emphasis on three distinct phases in the development of the post 9/11 superhero film - tracking its development from latent / covert critique through to fully-fledged, polemical confrontations with geopolitics, militarism and securitisation.

Beyond my doctoral research, I have explored the ways in which Transatlantic television has articulated post-9/11 concerns and anxieties. I also retain strong interests in critical theory, especially psychoanalysis and deconstruction, the literary landscape of the fin-de-siècle, and Hollywood since 1968.