Contact Details

Dr. Joe Kember
	Department(s): English
	Room: 306 (Queen's Building)
	Telephone: +44 (0)1392 262453 (Internal Ext. 2453)	This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
	CV for Joe Kember. (Adobe Acrobat™ file format – opens in a new window)

Research Interests

Joe Kember's research addresses the development of popular and visual entertainments throughout the Victorian period and early twentieth century, including traditions of performance and representation in early and silent film, magic lantern shows, music hall, fairground, and melodramatic theatre. Much of his writing has focused especially upon early silent film in relation to late Victorian and Edwardian popular culture, addressing the profound but ambivalent impact the introduction of this new technological mass medium had upon its audiences' understanding of performance, personality, and of the world around them. His co-authored book, Early Cinema 1895 - 1914: From Factory Gate to Dream Factory (London: Wallflower, 2004) offers an introduction to this field. Other recent publications have tackled spectatorship, performance and screening practices in exhibition sites such as Victorian freak shows, lecture rooms, and the magic theatre. His new book, A Cinema of Reassurance: Personality and Performance in British Film before 1910, offers a more 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.

 Joe Kember is also the co-director (with Dr John Plunkett) of a major AHRC funded project, ‘Moving and Projected Image Entertainments in the South West, 1820-1914.' Through a regional study, this three year project aims to broaden our understanding of the influence of nineteenth century entertainment forms, such as panoramas, dioramas, peepshows, and the magic lantern, upon the visual and performance culture of the period and in particular the development of film.

 Research interests in theories and philosophies of everyday life, especially in relation to the representation of space and time in photography, film, and television, have also contributed to current work concerning processes of adaptation between these media in ‘city texts' of the 1940s and 50s. Other future projects include a substantial study concerning facial representation and performance in silent and early sound cinema, and further work concerning public lecturing traditions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Publications

Most Representative Publications 

• A Cinema of Reassurance: Personality and Performance in British Film before 1910 (forthcoming, University of Exeter Press)
• 'The Functions of  Showmanship in Freakshow and Early Film',  in Early Popular Visual Culture 5:1 (April 2007): 1-23 
• 'The Cinema of Affections:  The Transformation of Authorship In British Cinema before 1907,' In The Velvet Light Trap 57 (Spring 2006): 3-16
• ‘Popular sensations: Gaskell, Boucicault, and the IMP Film Co.', in Visual Delights 2: Exhibition and Reception (London: John Libbey and Co.: McGraw-Hill, 2005): 46-60
•  ‘David Lynch and the Mug Shot: Facework in The Elephant Man and The Straight Story,' in Weird on Top: The Cinema and Television of David Lynch, eds. Annette Davison and Erica Sheen (London: Wallflower Press, 2004): 19-34
•  ‘The view from the top of Mont Blanc: The Alpine Entertainment in Victorian Britain', in Living Pictures: The Journal of the Popular and Projected Image before 1914 2:1 (2003): 21-46
• ‘Face-to-face: The facial expressions genre in early British film', in The Showman, the Spectacle, and the Two-Minute Silence: Performing British Cinema Before 1930, eds. Alan Burton and Larraine Porter (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 2001): 28-39

Teaching

Joe Kember convenes and teaches modules primarily on the Combined Hons. Programme in English and Film and on the MA Film Pathway. Undergraduate modules taught recently include ‘Culture and Criticism 1 and 2' and ‘Hollywood and Europe.' His third-year undergraduate option module, ‘Cityscapes', addresses representations of twentieth century urban experience in literature, film, television, and photography. He is currently designing a new MA module concerning early and silent cinema. He supervises and mentors PhD students working on varied aspects of nineteenth and early twentieth century entertainments, and is willing to consider supervising students working on any aspects of his research interests.