McGill University Department of English
853 Sherbrooke Street West
Arts Building
Montreal, QC H3A 0G5 CANADA
B.A. Honours (McGill); Ph.D. (Duke University) (Program in Literature); Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and World Cinemas
Film theory; visual culture; theories of affect; cultural studies; philosophy of the body and movement; gender and sexuality; film production; animation; dance, performance and movement studies; David Lynch, Norman McLaren, Gilles Deleuze, Dave St Pierre, William Kentridge; research-creation; and post-cinematic practices.
- FQRSC Établissement de nouveaux professeurs-chercheurs grant for “Le remix du corps et des genres : les croisements contemporains de la danse, du cinéma et de l'animation”
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown University (Pembroke Center for Research and Teaching on Women).
“Rabbit Ears: Locomotion in Lynch’s Inland Empire” In Francois-Xavier Gleyzon, ed. David Lynch in Theory. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia 2010. pp. 86-100.
“Anarchival Cinema” Inflexions 4 (December 2010) “Transversal Fields of Experience” edited by Troy Rhodes and Christoph Brunner. Link:
“Insecurity cameras: Elevator Criminality and Time” Intermédialités14 (Fall 2010), special issue “Build/Batir” edited by Will Straw and James Cistneros
“A texture in the desert of the real: Heterotopic Encounter in Denis Villeneuve’s Un 32 Aout Sur Terre” Nouvelles « vues » sur le cinéma québécois 11
“All the Single Babies: Adorable/ Automaton?” In Medias Res Dance and Technology Theme Week April 26-30, 2010.
“Against Full Frontal” Inflexions: A Journal of Research-Creation 2 (Fall 2008)
“Affective Commotion: Minding the Gap in Research-Creation”Inflexions: A Journal of Research-Creation 1 (May 2008).
“Wandering Stars: William Kentridge’s (Err)ant Choreographies”Parallax 14.1 (Winter 2008), Special Issue on “Installing the Body”
“The Intensions of Extensions: Compagnie Marie Chouinard’s bODY rEMIX/ gOLDBERG vARIATIONS” differences 19.1 (Winter 2008)
“Exogenesis: Mind children and cultured images in Battlestar Galactica” Flow 6.12 (December 2007) Special Issue on Battlestar Galactica.
“Funny How Secrets Travel: David Lynch’s Lost Highway”
Invisible Culture 8 (Fall 2004)
Forthcoming publications:
“Crime/Scene: Reanimating the Femme Fatale in David Lynch's Hollywood trilogy” Forthcoming in Crimen: sociedad y medios en Norteamérica, CISAN.
Special Issue of CiNéMaS, “Prises de rues” edited and with an introduction by Alanna Thain, Michael Cowan and Viva Paci (Winter 2011)
“Tendering the Flesh: The media provocations of Dave St Pierre” (with Virginia Preston”
“Dance, Dance, Evolution: Dance, Games and the Post-Cinematic Condition in Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Gamer”
The Moving Image Research Laboratory (MIRL)
CFI-funded infrastructural laboratory for the investigation of relations between developments in moving image technologies and understandings of the moving body. Investigators: Michael Cowan (German), Alanna Thain (English), Thomas Lamarre (East Asian Studies).
Editor, Inflexions: A Journal for Research-Creation inflexions.org
Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Working Group on “Representation, Performance, Culture” -mcgill.ca/igsf/axes/representation
A book project, Suspended (Re)Animations: Affect, Immediation and the Film Body, which critically examines the body in contemporary film theory via Gilles Deleuze’s claim that “the direct time-image in cinema gives a body to a phantom”, through consideration of works by Lynch, Hitchcock, Lou Ye, Hirokazu Kore-Eda and Norman McLaren.
A developing research project entitled An Experimental Night, focusing on questions of affect, expanded bodies and distributed cognition in the intersections between dance and audiovisual images (both onscreen and in live performance) in the works of William Kentridge, Norman McLaren, Marie Chouinard, DV8 Physical Theatre, David Lynch and others.