Dr David Martin-Jones
Senior Lecturer in Film Studies (On Research Leave 2012-2013 S1)
Research profile
ON RESEARCH LEAVE THROUGHOUT 2012
I am interested in world cinemas. I take a film-philosophical approach to issues of national and transnational identity in cinema. In recent years I have explored the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze in relation to films from diverse contexts (e.g. Latin American art films and genre movies, Asian cinemas like Bollywood, and Hollywood action movies). This theoretical work on a broad range of cinemas has developed into a project on how we understand the concept of world cinemas under globalization, using philosophers like Deleuze, Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Emmanual Levinas, Aníbal Quijano and Enrique Dussel.
I am also extremely interested in representations of small nations on screen. This developing interest encompasses globally-focused research into cinemas from nations which have recently experienced shifts from totalitarian rule to democracy.
I am the Director of the Centre for Film Studies.
I am the co-editor of Continuum's monograph series, Thinking Cinema.
I am on the editorial boards of Film-Philosophy, Deleuze Studies and A/V: The Journal of Deleuzian Studies.
I am one of the editors of the research resource deleuzecinema.com
See also the PURE research profile.
Research students
I have supervised five doctoral students to succesful completion, including projects on: Hong Kong cinema; Deleuzian approaches to altered states in cinemas; representations of women in transnational cinemas; the culture industry in South Korea; and the aesthetics of space in world cinemas.
I am currently supervising doctoral research students working on a range of subjects, including several taking theoretical approaches to cinema using the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (e.g. minor cinemas; the politics of affective aesthetics), and other projects on contemporary Japanese and Uruguayan cinemas.
I would welcome approaches from research students interested in working on projects related to all aspects of Deleuze and cinema, cinema and democracy, film-tourism, Scotland and cinema, and various Asian and South American cinemas.
Selected publications
Books
Deleuze and World Cinemas (Continuum, 2011)
[Introduction and opening chapter available through the "preview" button.]
Shortlisted for the BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies) annual book award, 2011-12.
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews said that "David Martin-Jones' admirable new book achieves something rare in the proliferating field of Deleuzian philosophy of film: an original study that is both critical and creative, an intervention in the "film as philosophy" debate that is at once theoretical and historical. ... Martin-Jones' contextualist critique of Deleuzian film philosophy, which at once challenges and extends its limits, marks an important advance in contemporary film philosophy. Deleuze and World Cinemas shows remarkably well, moreover, what a genuinely pluralist Deleuzian film philosophy might look like." For the full review click here.
Scotland: Global Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2009)
Visual Culture in Britain said that Scotland: Global Cinema "offers a thoughtful and refreshing approach to the many and different ways Scotland has been either represented or imagined on screen and contributes to our understanding of the term ‘Scottish film'... Martin-Jones' book will have instant appeal to scholars, not only of film but of cultural studies. The brevity and focus of each chapter renders it extremely readable and its overall investigation into different ways of interpreting Scottish filmic images is both bold and enlivening." For other reviews click here.
For a related piece on the cinematic rebranding of Nessie on the BBC News website, click here.
Deleuze Reframed [with Damian Sutton] (I.B. Tauris, 2008)
Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006)
The international Film Studies journal Screen, called Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: "an impressive feat and a model for future scholarship in this vein. Martin-Jones makes Deleuze 'matter', in that his historical perspective stresses that the Deleuzian distinction between time- and movement-images is not merely formal, but deeply political." For other reviews, click here.
Editorships
Deleuze and Film, co-edited with William Brown (Edinburgh University Press, 2012)
Cinema at the Periphery, co-edited with Dina Iordanova and Belen Vidal (Wayne State University Press, 2010)
Film-Philosophy International Salon Journal: Special Issue - "Continental Film-Philosophy" co-edited with Sarah Cooper, Douglas Morrey and Benjamin Noys 10:2 Dec 2006
Film-Philosophy International Salon Journal: Special Issue - "Reanimating the Auteur" co-edited with David Sorfa and John Mullarkey 10:1 May 2006
Journal Articles
"Film Tourism as Heritage Tourism: Scotland, Diaspora and The Da Vinci Code (2006)." New Review of Film and Television Studies. (forthcoming, 2014)
"Museums of Memory: Recovering Lost History in Recent Uruguayan Documentaries." Latin American Perspectives, 40: 1 (2013), pp. 73-87. [with Soledad Montañez]
"(Des) Localizando el Cine Uruguayo"/"(Dis) Locating Uruguayan Cinema", 33 Cines (Segundo Época) 1: 1 (2012), pp. 6-16. [with S. Montañez] (Reprint.)
"Colombiana: Europa Corp and the Ambiguous Geopolitics of the Action Movie", Senses of Cinema, 62 (2012)
"Transnational allegory/transnational history: Se sei vivo spara/Django Kill ... If You Live, Shoot!", Transnational Cinemas, 2: 2 (2011), pp. 179-195.
"Estudios de cine en el Reino Unido: La mirada hacia los "cines del mundo"/"Film Studies in the UK: The Turn to World Cinemas", 33 Cines, 2: 5 (2011), pp. 38-47. [Translated into Spanish for Publication in Uruguay.]
“Cinema in Progress: New Uruguayan Cinema.” Screen, 50: 3 (2009), pp. 334-344. [with Soledad Montañez]
“Bicycle Thieves, or Thieves on Bicycles? El Baño del Papa (2007)”, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, 4: 3 (2008), pp. 183-198. [with Soledad Montañez]
“Towards Another ‘–image’: Deleuze, Narrative Time and Popular Indian Cinema.” Deleuze Studies, 2:1 (2008), pp. 25-48.
"National Symbols: Scottish National Identity in Dog Soldiers", Symbolism: International Journal of Critical Aesthetics, 7 (2008): 169-200.
“Traces of Time in Traces of Love (2006): South Korean National History and the Time-Image”, Asian Cinema, 18: 2 (2007): 252-270.
"Decompressing modernity: South Korean Time Travel Narratives and the IMF Crisis" Cinema Journal 46:4 (2007): 45-67.
"Kabhi India, Kabhie Scotland: Bollywood Productions in Post-Devolutionary Scotland." Journal of South Asian Popular Culture 4:1 (2006): 49-60.
"Sexual Healing: Representations of the English in post-devolutionary Scotland", Screen, 46:2 (2005): 227-234.
"Two Stories, one right, one wrong: Narrative, national identity and Globalization in Sliding Doors", CineAction 64 (2004): 18-27.
"Orphans, a work of minor cinema from post-devolutionary Scotland", Journal of British Cinema and Television 1: 2 (2004): 226-241.
"Interview with Patrick Keiller", Journal of Popular British Cinema 5 (2002): 123-132.
Chapters in Edited Collections
"The Child Imprisoned in History: Crystalline Community Building in O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias (Brazil, 2006)." Karen Lury (ed.) The Child in Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 2014). (forthcoming).
"Foolish Bum, Funny Shit', Murray Pomerance (ed) The Last Laugh: Strange Humours of Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013). (forthcoming).
"The Dardenne Brothers encounter Enrique Dussel: Ethics, Eurocentrism and a philosophy for World Cinemas." in Maria Conceição Monteiro, Guillermo Giucci, Neil Besner (eds.), Além dos limites: ensaios para o século XXI/Beyond the Limits: Essays for the XXI Century. (Rio de Janeiro: State University of Rio de Janeiro Press, 2013).(forthcoming)
"Traces of time in Traces of Love (2006)." in David Martin-Jones & William Brown (eds.) Deleuze and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), pp. 54-70. (Reprint).
"Introduction." in David Martin-Jones & William Brown (eds.) Deleuze and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), pp. 1-17. [with William Brown]
"O ‘opsigno' de Gilles Deleuze em Machuca (2004): Cinema e História após a Ditadura Militar"/"Gilles Deleuze's "opsign" in Machuca (2004): Cinema and History after Military Rule", in Antonio Carlos Amorim, Silvio Galo, Wenceslao Machado de Oliveira Jr. (eds.), Conexões: Deleuze e Imagem e Pensamento e ... (Rio de Janeiro: DP et Alii, 2010), pp. 33-48. [Translated into Portugese for publication in Brazil.]
"Island at the Edge of History: Landscape and the Past in Recent Gaelic Cinema" in, David Martin-Jones, Dina Iordanova and Belen Vidal (eds.) Cinema at the Periphery (Wayne State University Press, 2009), pp. 156-174.
"Introduction", in D. Martin-Jones, D. Iordanova & B. Vidal (eds.) Cinema at the Periphery (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009), pp. 1-27. [with Dina Iordanova & Belen Vidal.]
“Images of mass commodification, US militarism, and the oil industry in The Big Lebowski”, in Ed Comentale (ed.), The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies (Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 203-227. (Reprint.)
"Scotland's Other Kingdoms: Reconsidering Regional and National Identities in a Growing Small Cinema", in, Jonathan Murray et al (eds.) New Scottish Cinema (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009), pp. 105-121.
"Demystifying Deleuze: French Philosophy Meets Contemporary US Cinema." in, Warren Buckland (ed.) Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies (New York: Routledge/American Film Institute, 2009), pp. 214-233.
“Schizoanalysis, Spectacle and the Spaghetti Western”, in Ian Buchanan & Patricia MacCormack (eds.), Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema (London: Continuum, 2008), pp. 75-88.
“Toon on the TV: The Televisual Rebranding of Newcastle, from Our Friends in the North (1996) to 55° North (2004-05)”, in Hilary Fawcett (ed.) Made in Newcastle (Newcastle: Northumbria University Press, 2007), 117-132.
"Images of mass commodification, US militarism, and the oil industry in The Big Lebowski", in, Stephen Bohm et al (eds.), The Sociological Review, Monograph: Against Automobility (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 133-149.
Current research
Following on from my third monograph, Deleuze and World Cinemas (2011), I am currently researching a new project on world cinemas. This uses the works of Latin American philosophers like Aníbal Quijano and Enrique Dussel, in particular their critique of Eurocentrism and modernity in light of Immanuel Wallerstein's world systems analysis, to reconsider how we understand world cinemas. This project looks at a range of cinemas from around the world, in particular films from new democracies. I recently presented on this topic in a keynote paper at the annual Film-Philosophy conference in 2011.
In addition I am working on a comparative study of the global phenomenon of film-tourism. This project has already received funding from the Carnegie Trust for research trips to New York and Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa) in 2010.
Teaching
I currently teach the following specialist modules:
Postgraduate Modules
FM5001 Theory and Practice of Research in Film Studies
FM5201 Deleuze and Transnational Cinemas
FM5210 Directed Readings in Film Studies
FM5217 Scotland: Global Cinema
Undergraduate Modules
FM4101 Time, National Identity and Cinema
FM4201 Japanese Cinema after WWII
FM4203 American Independent Cinema
FM4204 Asian Cinemas
FM4205 Scotland and Cinema