English and Creative Writing

Photo of Professor Joe Kember

Professor Joe Kember

Professor

J.E.Kember@exeter.ac.uk

4332

01392 724332

Overview

Joe Kember is a Professor in Film and Visual Culture. His research interests include early and silent cinema, Victorian and Edwardian popular entertainments including the magic lantern, theories of film affect, and issues concerning the representation of the human face. He teaches film, literature, and cultural theory, and has supervised postgraduate research concerning topics ranging from Victorian freak show to contemporary Scottish cinema. He is currently completing a book concerning the exhibition of popular screen entertainments, 1840-1914.

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Research

My research is in popular and visual culture throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and especially in early and silent cinema. My book, Marketing Modernity: Victorian Popular Shows and Early Cinema (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2009), provides an expansive analysis of the institutional development of early film in relation to emergent models of self-identity and personality at the turn of the century.  Other notable publications in the field of silent film studies include Early Cinema 1895 - 1914: From Factory Gate to Dream Factory (London: Wallflower, 2004), co-authored with Simon Popple.

A second strand of my research is in popular entertainments, exhibitions, and displays between 1850 and 1914.  From 2007 I led, with Professor John Plunkett, the AHRC funded project, Moving and Projected-Image Entertainment in the South-West 1840-1914.  The co-authored book, Picture Going: Popular Visual Media in the South-West 1840-1914  will be the major published output for the project, to be published by Oxford University Press. Among my  other books, articles and chapters, are publications that have tackled spectatorship, performance and screening practices in exhibition sites such as Victorian freak shows, lecture theatres, public halls, and the magic theatre. I was the UK Principal Investigator in the project, A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slide Heritage as Artefacts in the Common European History of Learning,  funded in the UK by the AHRC and co-funded by the European Commission. I was also the Partner Invesrtigator in Audralian Reserach Council project, 'Heritage in the Limelight: The Magic Lantern in Australia and the World.' Following these projects, I have puclished extensively on the magic lantern.

Among my other interests, my new projects concern representation of the human face in visual cultures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the development of a transnational circuit of lantern lecturers between 1870 and 1940.

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Supervision

I have supervised PhD students in the fields of  cinema history and theory, nineteenth-century shows and popular culture, and film practice. In addition to these areas, I am also interested in supervising PhD theses on any aspects of film and popular entertainment exhibition practices, histories of acting and performance, representation of cities and other spaces on film, and theories of film, including studies of cognition, emotion, and embodiment.

I also use Exeter's Bill Douglas Cinema Museum (http://www.billdouglas.org/) widely in my research and would be very interested in working further with doctoral students on the substantial mass of materials held by the Museum concerning film history and nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual and popular culture.

Research students

First Supervisor (completions indicated with a *).

*Ros Leveridge, Dignified and Discreet’: The Development of Popular Entertainment in Devon Coastal Resorts, 1870-1914 [AHRC Project Studentship] (f/t, 2008-11).

*Fiona Petit, Freak Shows in Britain 1870-1900: Interactions of Popular Entertainment and Medical Curiosity (f/t, 2008-12).

*Adam Whybray, Animating Dissent: The Political Object of Czechoslovakian Stop-Motion Film (f/t, 2011-15).

*Jamie Chambers, The Strange Home Project: Towards a Distinctive, ‘Authentic’ Contribution to Scottish Cinema Grounded in Community Folklore (f/t PhD by Practice co-supervised with LFS, 2012-17).

*Jane Devoy, Methods of Writing, Production and Exhibition in Contemporary Filmmaking: How Modes of Working Affect Final Product (f/t PhD by Practice co-supervised with LFS, 2012-17).

*Edward Falvey, Reading the Cinematic City: Iconography, Transformations, and the Birth of New York City (f/t, 2013-17). [Awarded 6 month visiting AHRC scholarship in the Library of Congress, February-July 2015].

*Chris Grosvenor, Cinema on the Frontline: A History of Military Cinema Exhibition during WWI and WWII  (f/t, 2015-18)

*Tony Lidington, The Itinerant British Showman: the exploration and evolution of ‘Seer Performance’ [co-supervisor, PhD by publication, f/t, 2016-18)

Barbara Santi, Representing local Cornish cultural identity: Community collaboration, archives and emerging documentary practices (PhD by practice, p/t, 2015-)

Amelia Seely, Creativity and Constraint in the British Film Industry: A Case Study on Bill Douglas (co-supervisor, f/t, 2018-)

Lisanne Moliné, Cognition and Light in Contemporary Cinematography (co-supervisor, PhD by practice, f/t, 2019-)

Second Supervisor.

Phil Wickham, British Situation Comedy and the Culture of New Capitalism (f/t, 2009-12)

*Christopher Davies, History, Fantasy and Reality: The Influence of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Contemporary Historical and Fantasy Films since 2004 (f/t, 2010-16).

*Gillian Moore, The Life and Work of Charles Victor Alexander Peel (p/t, 2008-18).

*Alice Levick, Narrative Representations of American Urban Space from 1920-1960 (p/t, 2011-18).

*Richard Wells, The Apple Paradigm: Food for Thought (f/t, 2011-18).

*Will Barrett, Digital Interaction with Heritage (f/t, 2012-19).

*Laura López Martín doctorial Visiting Scholar, British and Spanish Collaboration in the Silent Era (2014-17).

Bogna Starczewska, Woody Allen and the European City: Representations of Globalisation and the American Tourist in Europe (f/t, 2017-)

Irene Gomez Emilsson, Cinematography and Landscape: the example of contemporary Icelandic moving image (f/t, 2019-)

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Publications

Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.

| 2023 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2001 | 2000 |

2023

  • Kember J. (2023) From Early Film to "Popular Shows", CUSP: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Cultures, volume 1, no. 1, pages 45-54, DOI:10.1353/cusp.2023.0012. [PDF]
  • Kember J. (2023) Adaptation Before Cinema: Literary and Visual Convergence from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, Adaptation, volume 16, no. 3, pages 433-435, DOI:10.1093/adaptation/apad025.
  • Starczewska B. (2023) Outsiderism, displacement and escapism in the European films of Woody Allen.
  • Santi B. (2023) King for a Day. A Documentary Exploring Archive Film, Community Collaboration and Cornish Cultural Identity Through Padstow’s May Day Tradition.
  • Watts A. (2023) Creativity and Constraint: Bill Douglas and the British Film Industry in the 1970s and 1980s.

2020

2019

  • Kember J. (2019) The magic lantern in colonial Australia and New Zealand, Early Popular Visual Culture, volume 17, no. 1, pages 132-133, DOI:10.1080/17460654.2018.1558813.
  • Kember J, Bush M, Novikh A, Eifler K, Hayes E, Kessler F, Lenk S, Brooker J, Jolly M, Wynants N. (2019) The International Lantern, parts 1 and 2 (special issue), Early Popular Visual Culture, volume 17, no. 1, 3-4, pages 1-414. [PDF]
  • Kember J, Bush M, Novik A, Eifler K, Hayes E, lenk S, Brooker J, Jolly M, Kessler F. (2019) Early Popular Visual Culture Special Issue: The International Lantern Parts 1 and 2, Taylor & Francis (Routledge).
  • Kember J. (2019) Lantern Mobilities, Early Popular Visual Culture, DOI:10.1080/17460654.2019.1702189.
  • Kember J. (2019) The magic lantern: open medium, Early Popular Visual Culture, volume 17, no. 1, pages 1-8, DOI:10.1080/17460654.2019.1640605.

2018

2017

2016

2015

  • Kember J. (2015) RAMMBLE newsletter 'project Updates' in March 2015 and March 2016.
  • Kember J. (2015) Photography and the lantern slide.
  • Kember J. (2015) Mad Hatter's Tea Party with The Carny Villains.

2014

2013

2012

  • Kember J. (2012) Reading the Cinematograph: The Cinema in British Short Fiction 1896-1912, VICTORIAN STUDIES, volume 54, no. 4, pages 765-767, DOI:10.2979/victorianstudies.54.4.765. [PDF]
  • Kember J. (2012) Professional Lecturing in Early British Film Shows, The Sounds of the Silents in Britain, OUP.
  • Kember J, Plunkett J, Sullivan J. (2012) Popular Exhibitions, science, and Showmanship, Pickering and Chatto.

2011

  • Clayton O, Demasure R, Mollet T, Kember J. (2011) Jack London, Photographer, Early Popular Visual Culture, volume 9, no. 3, pages 257-264, DOI:10.1080/17460654.2011.601170.
  • Kember J. (2011) From Plato to Lumiere: Narration and monstration in literature and cinema, EARLY POPULAR VISUAL CULTURE, volume 9, no. 3, pages 262-264. [PDF]

2010

2009

  • Kember J. (2009) Marketing modernity: Victorian Popular Shows and Early Cinema, University of Exeter. [PDF]
  • Kember J. (2009) Child’s Play: Participation in Urban Space in Weegee’s, Dassin’s, and Debord’s Versions of Naked City, Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities, Continuum, 72-85. [PDF]

2007

2006

2005

  • Kember J. (2005) Popular Sensations: Gaskell, Boucicault, and the IMP Film Co, Visual Delights II: Exhibition and Reception, John Libbey, 46-59.

2004

  • Popple S, Kember J. (2004) Early cinema, Wallflower Press.
  • Kember, J.. (2004) David Lynch and the Mugshot: Facework in the Elephant man and the Straight Story, The Cinema of David Lynch, Wallflower Press, 19-34.

2003

  • Kember J. (2003) The view from the top of Mont Blanc: The Alpine Entertainment in Victorian Britain, Living Pictures: The Journal of the Popular and Projected Image before 1914, volume 2, no. 1, pages 21-45.

2001

  • Kember J. (2001) Face-to-face: The facial expressions genre in early British film, The showman, the spectacle and the two-minute silence, Flicks Books, 28-39.

2000

  • Kember J. (2000) "It was not the show, it was the tale that you told”: Early Film Lecturing on the British Fairground, Visual Delights: The Popular and Projected Image in the Nineteenth Century, Flicks Books, 61-71.

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External impact and engagement

I am the author of an Impact Case Study concerning heritage collections of magic lantern materials in the UK. Across two major projects, I have worked extensively with the Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource, the world's largest targeted database of magic lantern slides. Working within a series of Museums and other public collections across the UK, I have sought to improve knowledge and dissemination of magic lantern slide imagery within collections, as well as curating new forms of exhibition in relation to this often-forgotten medium. As a result of these projects, Lucerna has grown dramatically, and provides information and images to a global audience on an open access basis.

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Teaching

I have taught modules of all kinds across the film studies programme, as well as the English programme, at all levels. In my MA module, Sense, Sensation and Cinema, I teach various models of 'affect theory', considering phenomenological and cognitive patterns of thought in relation to film.

Modules taught

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