Dr Mary Harrod

Associate Professor

Tel: +44 (0)24 765 23014

Email: M dot G dot M dot Harrod at warwick dot ac dot uk

Research

My primary research is in contemporary film and media history and theory and is tied together by an emphasis on the relationship between aesthetics and ideology, especially in popular and/or transnational modes.

After my first BA and MA in Modern Languages I worked for six years in film development and production. As well as directing a short film, in this period I worked on the romcom Love, Actually and wrote a prize-winning romcom screenplay, affording me practical knowledge of this genre that I then developed in a research context by writing a PhD, then a book, examining filmed romantic comedy's phenomenal recent proliferation in France from a gender and cultural studies perspective. I concurrently co-edited a book examining the status of European cinema in today's increasingly globalised age.

More recently, alongside maintaining my expertise in cultural studies approaches to European audiovisual production, I have co-edited a volume looking at genre narratives authored by women in film and television globally that won the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies' Best Edited Collection Prize (2019). Meanwhile, I have developed more primarily aesthetically-focused aspects of my work in the context of feminist but mainstream audiovisual production and am currently finalising a monograph on Heightened Genre and the Cine-fille Hollywood Director. This research will be accompanied by a series of video essays.

My various stands of contemporary work in screen studies also take in queer and affect theory; questions of embodied address; and issues of posthuman identity, especially in dialogue with representations of young people: the focus of my next book project.

In March 2018 I was awarded a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award to fund a series of events on the theme of 'Imagining "We" in the Age of "I": Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture'. I am now co-editing a book for Routledge deriving from the project, with a trans-global and trans-media focus, alongside Diane Negra and Suzanne Leonard.

In April 2019 I was awarded an AHRC Networking Grant to be Principal Investigator on the project: Producing the Post-National Popular: The Expanding Imagination of Mainstream French Films and Television Series, whose key intervention is to take French production as emblematic of major expansions in the transnational circulation of audiovisual culture across even linguistic borders in the contemporary moment, drawing out the implications of this change for representations and cross-cultural perceptions and dialogue https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/research/french/currentprojects/postnationalpopular.

I have been a member of the College of General Editors for Studies in French Cinema since 2017 and as of 2020 take over as Co-Chief General Editor, renaming the journal French Screen Studies.

Teaching and Supervision

I specialise in teaching French film and society and, together with Douglas Morrey, have been responsible for the second- and final-year French Cinema module, which covers French cinema from the early 1930s to the present, as well as teaching the final-year module States of the Nation: French Cinema From 1990 to the Present. I also teach a final-year module looking at Gender and Representation in French Media since 1970, which encompasses an interdisciplinary focus across film, television and written media and at MA level on various courses (e.g. History and Film and running specialised modules: French Gender Studies, Genre in French Film History and Female Homosociality and Homoeroticism in Postfeminist French Cinema).

In addition, I have taught a second-year module in Hispanic Studies on Contemporary Spanish Cinema and teach on the cross-language module Languages and Cultures Beyond Boundaries.

In 2016-17 I was Visiting Scholar in Comparative Media Studies and Writing at MIT and Visiting Lecturer at Brandeis University, MA, where I taught modules on Introduction to the Moving Image and Genre, Gender and Women's Filmmaking.

I am currently supervising PhDs on one-parent families in French cinema of the 2010s and on the French horror movie. I am interested in supervising projects on a range of topics in (transnational) European and US film and media, emphasising popular modes and/or cultural and gender studies.

Publications

Books

M. Harrod and K. Paszkiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Routledge (2017). Nominated for the Kraszna-Krausz Best Moving Image Book Award 2018 (only edited collection nominated) and WINNER of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Best Edited Collection Prize for 2019.

From France with Love: Gender and Identity in French Romantic Comedy, I.B. Tauris (2015). Shortlisted for the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Best Monograph 2017.

M. Harrod, M. Liz and A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization, I.B. Tauris (2015).

Journal Special Issues

M. Harrod and P. Powrie (eds), ‘New directions in contemporary French comedies,’ Studies in French Cinema 18:1 (2018).

Journal Articles

‘From Postnational Mobility to Posthuman Fluidity: Unfixed Identities and Social Responsibilities in Personal Shopper (Assayas 2016) and Happy End (Haneke 2017),’ Northern Lights: Film and Media Studies Yearbook, Special Issue on 'Europe at the Crossroads: Cinematic Takes' 18 (2020) (ed. Temenuga Trifonova), pp. 85–101.
M. Harrod, G. Vincendeau and P. Powrie, 'Editorial: Studies in French Cinema Becomes French Screen Studies,' French Screen Studies vol. 20, no. 1 (2020), pp. 1-5.
‘“Money Can't Buy Me Love”: Radical Right-wing Populism in French Romantic Comedies of the 2010s,’ New Review of Film and Television Studies, Special Issue on ‘Radical Romantic Comedy', vol. 18, no. 1 (January 2020) (ed. Maria San Fiippo), pp. 101-118.

M. Harrod and P. Powrie, ‘New directions in contemporary French comedies: From nation, sex and class to ethnicity, community and the vagaries of the postmodern,’ Studies in French Cinema 18:1 (2018), pp. 1-17.
‘Sweet Nothings? Imagining the Inexpressible in Contemporary French Romantic Comedy,’ Studies in French Cinema, vol. 13, no. 2 (2013), pp.171-187. Winner of the 2013 Susan Hayward Prize.
‘The Réalisatrice and the Rom-Com in the 2000s,’ Studies in French Cinema, Special Issue on ‘Women’s Filmmaking in the 2000s,’ vol. 12, no. 3 (2012) (ed. Carrie Tarr), pp.227-240.
‘Linguistic Difference as Ontological Sameness in Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (Boon 2008),’ Studies in French Cinema vol. 12, no. 1 (2012), pp.75-86. Winner of the 2012 Susan Hayward Prize.
‘The Aesthetics of Pastiche in the Work of Richard Linklater,’ Screen vol. 51, no.1 (2010), pp.21-37.

Book Chapters

'Parisian Lovers in the Contemporary Romcom,' in A. Phillips and G. Vincendeau (eds), Paris in the Cinema - Beyond the Flâneur, Palgrave (2017), pp. 156-166.
‘The Myth of Lena Dunham,’ in M. Harrod and K. Paskiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Routledge (2017), pp. 179-197.
‘Introduction,’ (with Paszkiewicz), in M. Harrod and K. Paskiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Routledge (2017), pp. 1-20.
‘Cinephilia as Multilingualism in The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011) and Blancanieves (Pablo Berger, 2012),’ in T. Mamula and L. Patti (eds), The Multilingual Screen, Bloomsbury (2016), pp. 69-89.
‘“As If a Girl’s Reach Should Exceed Her Grasp”: Gendering Genericity and Spectatorial Address in the Work of Amy Heckerling,’ in F. Smith and T. Shary (eds), Refocus on the Films of Amy Heckerling, Edinburgh University Press (2016), pp. 53-72.
‘Girlfriends, Postfeminism and the European Chick-Flick in France,’ in F. Handyside and K. Taylor (eds), International Cinema and the Girl: Local Issues, Transnational Contexts, Palgrave Macmillan (2015), pp.35-49.
‘Danièle Thompson: French Women’s Screenwriting Goes Global,’ in J. Selbo and J. Nelmes (eds), Women Screenwriters: An International Guide, Palgrave Macmillan (2015), pp. 346-351.

‘Franglais, Anglais and Contemporary French Comedy,’ in M. Harrod, M. Liz and A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization, I.B. Tauris (2015), pp. 145-158.
Introduction,’ (co-authored with Liz and Timoshkina) in M. Harrod, M. Liz and A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization, I.B. Tauris (2015), pp.1-13.
‘Auteur Meets Genre: Rohmer and the Rom-Com,’ in L. Anderst (ed.), The Films of Eric Rohmer: French New Wave to Old Master, Palgrave Macmillan (2014), pp.101-113.

Three entries, Directory of World Cinema: France, T. Palmer and C. Michael (eds), Intellect (2013).

Reviews/Review Articles

Nancy Meyers by Deborah Jermyn, Feminist Media Studies, no. 2 (February 2018): 329-330.
French Cinema in Close-Up by M. Abecassis with M. Block (eds), Studies in European Cinema vol. 13 (August 2016)
Nationalism and the Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995 by Hugo Frey, French History vol. 30, no. 2 (2016): 282-283.

French Comedy on Screen: A Cinematic History by Rémi Fournier-Lanzoni, French Studies vol. 69, no. 4 (2015): 573-574.
Je t’aime...moi non plus: Franco-British Cinematic Relations by L. Mazdon and C. Wheatley (eds), Screening the Past no. 33 (April 2012).
Richard Linklater by D. T. Johnson, Senses of Cinema no. 64 (September 2012)

Translation

Translation from Spanish (with Paszkiewicz) of Barbara Zecchi’s ‘Comedy as a Feminist Strategy: Spanish Women Filmmakers Reclaim Laughter,’ in M. Harrod and K. Paskiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Routledge (2017), pp. 91-105.

Public Engagement

Reuters interview with Sonia Elks for quotation for her article, ‘The bitch is back? UK film festival sparks debate over use of term’ http://news.trust.org/item/20190505110309-spvid/, Thomson Reuters Foundation News, 5 May 2019. Reproduced for print and media in dozens of international media outlets including The Daily Mail newspaper, All Africa Radio and several Asian newspapers.
'The Favourite: At Last We're Seeing Lesbianism Take Centre Stage in Popular Culture', The Conversation, January 25 2019 https://theconversation.com/the-favourite-at-last-were-seeing-lesbianism-take-centre-stage-in-popular-culture-110045 Reprinted in The New European, 7 February 2019, p.44, and The i Newspaper online, 26 February 2019.
BBC Coventry and Warwickshire, 2pm, interview discussing research project Imagining ‘We’ in the Age of ‘I’, 27 September 2018.
'#MeToo or #Moi Non Plus? How French Feminists are Divided Over Catherine Deneuve's Letter', The Conversation, 12 January 2018 https://theconversation.com/metoo-or-moi-non-plus-how-french-feminists-are-divided-over-catherine-deneuves-letter-89978#comment_1508058. Reprinted on the website Fair Observer, 13 January 2018, and in the newspaper The New European, 18 January 2018, p. 27.
BBC News 24 with Shaun Ley, 2pm on Saturday 24 October 2017, discussing sexism in Hollywood and the Weinstein scandal https://www.dropbox.com/s/s4rc6pphy3gqror/BBC_News_Channel-2017-10-14_14-09-55.mp4?dl=0
BBC Coventry and Warwick, Thursday 12 October 'Drive-Time' with Phil Upton at 5.45pm.
LBC Radio, London, Friday 13 October at 9.30pm.
'Girls may be flawed, but its feminist legacy will last,' The Conversation, February 10 2017 https://theconversation.com/girls-may-be-flawed-but-its-feminist-legacy-will-last-72442. Reprinted in The Independent, Thursday 16 February 2017, p. 35.
Discussing the French rom-com as part of 'French Thought' feature on 'Free Thinking', BBC Radio 3, Thursday 9 July 2015,10pm (at 34 mins 30s) https://www.dropbox.com/s/kgb4zlh3opob56f/Free%20Thinking%20-%209th%20July%202015.mp3?dl=0
'How Hollywood-style rom-coms seduced France', The Conversation, 24 June 2015 https://theconversation.com/how-hollywood-style-rom-coms-seduced-france-43680.
I am also a repeat contributor to Sight and Sound.

Background and Formal Qualifications

BA/MA (Oxford, French and Spanish); MA and PhD (King's College London, Film Studies). After my PhD, I taught at King's College and at the London School of Economics and Political Science's Gender Institute, before joining Warwick in 2014. I have also completed Warwick's PCAPP qualification (Postgraduate Certificate in Academic and Professional Practice).