Dr Elisabetta Girelli
Lecturer in Film Studies
Research profile
My research focuses on the representation of identity on screen, specifically in terms of sexuality, gender, and nationality. I am very interested in cultural analysis, particularly in queer theory and in theories of representation; in screen constructions of normativity, and the demarcation of the 'normal' and abject body; in the study of individual stars and auteurs; in textual analysis, and in revisionist readings of filmic texts, to identify conflicting strands of available meaning and the formation of oppositional configurations.
My most recent research has concentrated on the critical, theoretical, and textual study of queer stardom, as I have just completed a monograph on Montgomery Clift as a queer star and signifier: the book spans the whole of Clift's career, analysing the range of subversive configurations he brought to the screen.
Next projects include a study of Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950) and its complex representation of male disability; and a critical assessment of the collaboration between the Italian actress Anna Magnani and the American playwright Tennessee Williams.
My past work has centred on the representation of Italianness in British film history; on transnational and orientalist issues in the work of the Turkish/Italian director Ferzan Özpetek; on spatial relationships and their relation to place in Czechoslovak and Estonian film; and on cinematic renditions of the Cambridge Spies, especially of Guy Burgess.
See also the PURE research profile.
Research students
I am interested in supervising doctoral theses on these broad topics: queer cinema and queer theory; stars studies and auteur studies; sexual, gender, and national identity in British, European, and Hollywood cinemas, within frameworks of cultural analysis and theories of representation; the construction of disability on screen, crip theory; representations of the normative body and its contestations.
Selected publications
Forthcoming:
'Montgomery Clift: Queer Star' (monograph, 2013)
'The Traitor as Patriot: Guy Burgess, Englishness and Camp in Another Country and An Englishman Abroad' in Journal of European Popular Culture, 2:2 (2012)
'Subverting space: Private, public and power in three Czechoslovak films from the 1960s and ‘70s' in Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2:1 (2011).
'Man and Boy: Montgomery Clift as a Queer Star in Wild River' in Journal of Popular Film and Television, issue 4 (2011)
Beauty and the Beast: Italianness in British Cinema (Intellect Press, 2009)
‘Transnational Orientalism: Ferzan Özpetek's Turkish Dream in Hamam', New Cinemas, (2007, 5:1)
‘Beauty and the Beast: the Construction of Italianness in A Room With A View and Where Angels Fear to Tread', Studies in European Cinema (2006, 3:1)
‘The Construction of Femininity in Almodovár's Women on the Verge of A nervous Breakdown', Hispanic Research Journal (2006, 7:3)
‘Transnational Maleness: the Italian Immigrant in Hell Drivers', Cinema Journal (2005, 44:3)
‘Subverting Rules and Reinforcing Stereotypes: Italianness in Madonna of the Seven Moons', National Identities (2004, 6:2).
Current research
I am currently working on The Men (Fred Zinnemann, 1950), a ground-breaking yet deeply conflictive, creatively ambiguous film dealing with disabled WWII veterans; it is also Marlon Brando's screen debut.
Teaching
In 2012-13 I co-convene FM2001: Modern World Cinemas, as well as convening FM4304: Film and Sexual Identities
I also teach on the following courses:
FM1002 Film History and Historiography
FM5001 Theory and Practice of Research in Film Studies