James Davis
Background:
I hold a first class BA in Film and Television Studies from the University of Lincoln and an MA in Film and Television Studies from the University of Warwick. My MA dissertation was titled Hybridised Musicals: Cinematic Representations of Animated Marginality in Recent Disney Films, which explored how the hybridity of the animated film musical was utilised by Walt Disney Studio to re-present non-western identities throughout their contemporary output, investigating how Disney found itself in a position of power based on the company’s rich animated past of cultivating representations for the big screen. This project developed my interest in the relationship between the musical as a genre and the politics of representations associated with marginalised groups, particularly how they intersect as a means to the revitalise the contemporary musical.
Current Research
My PhD research titled Musicalising Madness: Representations of Mental Distress in Hollywood Musicals, is concerned with how madness and distress are intrinsically inherent to the language and cinematic conventions of the Hollywood film musical. Centred around the core organising question, what can the Hollywood musical do in representing madness and distress that other genre's can't do/ can't do as well? My research specifically explores how song, dance and alternative dream spaces allow for mad thresholds to emerge within the genre.
Drawing explicitly on musical theory, mad studies scholarship and intersectional frameworks for analysing madness and distress my thesis examines a wide range of case studies from across the genre's life span. Additionally, I offer a comparative analysis between the melodrama and the musical to elucidate how these genre's intersect with one another through their differing but also shared modalities of depicting madness within an American consciousness.
Ultimately my thesis aims to provide intersectional frameworks for the different filmic forms that madness and distress can draw upon to represent varying yet shared experiences of such representations for those living on the boundaries of marginality in cinema more broadly.
My research is co-supervised by Dr Julie Lobalzo-Wright and Dr Chris O'Rourke.
Research Interests
My main research interest are in film stardom, performance, celebrity, popular music and cinema, musicals, Hollywood/ American cinema, sound and cinema, animation, queer & trans theories and histories.
I am especially interested in representations in the subjects noted above and how they intersect with one another to form alternative traditions and lenses to analyse these areas.
Conferences
'Animating a Global Aesthetic: The Disneyfication of Cultural and Ethnic Narratives/ Style for a Western Audience' - British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Conference 2025
'Visualising Psychiatric Distress and Emotions in The Snake Pit (1948)' - Media and Emotion Conference, Bournemouth University, September 2026 (forthcoming)
Memberships
BAFTSS: British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies
Teaching
The Business of Film (2026)
Contact
