About

James C. Taylor is a Teaching Fellow in Film and Television Studies. He holds a BA in Film Studies from the University of Kent, and completed his Masters and PhD at the University of Warwick. His PhD thesis, ‘Hollywood Superheroes: The Aesthetics of Comic Book to Film Adaptation’, develops a theoretically-informed approach with which to undertake close analysis of superhero blockbusters adapted from comic books. The thesis can be read here. His first monograph, The Superhero Blockbuster: Adaptation, Style, and Meaning, is due to be released April 2025 by the University Press of Mississippi.

Research Interests

My research interests include Hollywood cinema, digital images, adaptation theory, transmediality, film seriality, media franchising, comics studies and horror. I am particularly interested in exploring ways in which style and form inflect the meanings of texts as they are adapted between media.

Teaching

In the 2024/25 academic year I am leading the first year core Film and Literature module Adaptation: From Page to Screens in the Autumn term, the first year core Film Studies module Screen Technologies in the Spring term and the third year optional module Film Seriality and Franchising in the Spring term, .

I have previously taught on the following modules:

• Film Criticism (first year core module)
• Film History (first year core module)
• Film and Television Studies 101 (first year core module)
• Visual Cultures (first year core module)
• Hollywood Cinema (second year core module)
• National Cinema (second year core module)
• World Cinema (second year core module)
• Post-Classical Hollywood (second year option)
• Art of Animation (second and third year option)
• Film Aesthetics (third year core module)
• Screen Cultures and Methods (MA core module)
• The Global Audience (MA option for the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies)

Publications

The Superhero Blockbuster: Adaptation, Style, and Meaning (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming April 2025).

'The Owls Nesting in the Bat's City: Secrecy, Gotham's Social Structures, and the Court of Owls' in Marco Favaro and Justin F. Martin (ed.), Batman's Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham's Souls (Lanham: Lexington, 2023), pp. 51-64.

'Configurations of Man, Monster and Hero in The Incredible Hulk' in Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson (ed.), Epic / Everyday: Moments in Television (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023), pp. 29-51.

'Postmodern Parody in Animated Superhero Cinema,' in Lorna Piatti-Farnell (ed.), The Superhero Multiverse: Readapting Comic Book Icons in Twenty-First-Century Film and Popular Media (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021), pp. 87-104.

‘Reading the Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Avengers’ Intertextual Aesthetic,’ JCMS 60, no. 3 (Spring 2021), pp. 129–156.

‘Renewing Hegemonic Masculinity Every Wednesday: Arrow and Television Form’, in Esther De Dauw and Daniel J. Connell (ed.), Toxic Masculinity: Mapping the Monstrous in Our Heroes (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020), pp. 34-51.

‘Can a Digitally Constructed Spider-Man do Whatever a Hand-Drawn Spider-Man Can?: CGI as Adaptation Strategy’, in Barry Keith Grant and Scott Henderson (eds.), Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019), pp. 232-245.

‘Reconfiguring Gender and Genre in Wonder Woman’, Alternate Takes (2017). PDF available here.

‘Kick-Ass Version 2.0: The Superhero’s Navigation of Comic Books, Film and Digital Media’, Writing Visual Culture, vol. 7 (2015).

Conference Papers

'The Temporality of Grief and the Film Sequel: Reconstructing Memories in The Souvenir Part II', Association of Adaptation Studies Nineteenth Annual Conference: Time and Space in Adaptation, University of Szczecin, June 2024.

'Mourning in the Horror Film Sequel', Horror Studies Now 2024, Northumbria University, May 2024.

'"I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror": Cinematic visualisations of Lovecraft's prose', Fear 2000: Horror Uncaged, Sheffield Hallam University, July 2023.

'In Pursuit of an Authentic Lovecraftian Image on Screen', Association of Adaptation Studies Eighteenth Annual Conference: Authenticity and Adaptation, University of Birmingham, June 2023.

'“Or is He Both?”: (Re)connecting the Superhero and Horror Genres in The Immortal Hulk', The Superhero Project: 6th Global Meeting, Van Der Valk, Moers, September 2022.

'Hulk Undying: (Re)connecting Horror and Superheroes in The Immortal Hulk', Fear 2000: Horror Undying, Online, July 2022.

'The Strangest Continuity of All: Traversing Timelines in the X-Men Films', The Superhero Project: 5th Global Meeting, Die Wolfsberg, Mülheim, September 2021.

'The Strangest Continuity of All: Journeying Across Timelines in the X-Men Films', Association of Adaptation Studies Sixteenth Annual Conference: Journeys: Memory and Migration, Online, June 2021.

'Tears of a Hulk and the Lonely Ranger: Configurations of Monster/Man in Television’s The Incredible Hulk', The Superhero Project: 4th Global Meeting, Die Wolfsberg, Mülheim, September 2020.

'Into the Superhero-Verse: Self-reflexivity and Critique in Animated Superhero Cinema', The Superhero Project: 3rd Global Meeting, Die Wolfsberg, Mülheim, September 2019.

'Into the Superhero-Verse: Postmodern Aesthetics in Animated Superhero Cinema', Association of Adaptation Studies Fifteenth Annual Conference: Adaptation and Modernisms, Masaryk University, Brno, September 2019.

'Junji Ito’s Gyo from Manga to Anime: Adaptation and Genre Hybridity', Fear 2000: Contemporary Horror Worldwide, Sheffield Hallam University, May 2019.

'The Adaptation’s Sequel as Textual Replicant: Blade Runner 2049’s Quest for Authenticity', Association of Adaptation Studies Thirteenth Annual Conference: Facts: True, Alternative, Evolving, University of Amsterdam, September 2018.

'Digital Imaging Technology and Technique', Film as Film Today: On the Criticism and Theory of V. F. Perkins, University of Warwick, September 2018.

‘Can a Digitally Constructed Spider-Man Do Whatever a Hand-drawn Spider-Man Can?: CGI as Adaptation Strategy’, SCMS 2017, Fairmont Chicago, Millennium Park, March 2017.

‘Nostalgic Reflections on American Comic Book and Cultural History in Superhero Blockbusters’, Association of Adaptation Studies Eleventh Annual Conference: Adaptations and History, St Anne’s College, Oxford, September 2016.

‘“I Must Become Something Else”: Arrow’s Serialisation of Masculinity’, The Superhero Project: 2nd Global Meeting, Mansfield College, Oxford, September 2016.

‘“Superheroes in New York? Give Me a Break”: Representing Urban Experience in Superhero Blockbusters’, Association of Adaptation Studies Tenth Annual Conference: Adaptations and the Metropolis, Senate House, London, September 2015.

‘The Mild Mannered Man of Steel: A Transmedia Dismantling of the Clark Kent/Superman Binary’, The Superhero Project: 1st Global Meeting, Mansfield College, Oxford, September 2015.

‘We are Iron Man: Forging Multiplicity in a Culturally Unfamiliar Superhero’, Association of Adaptation Studies Ninth Annual Conference: Adaptations and Multiplicities, Flagler College, St. Augustine, September 2014.

‘It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Coming Right at Us!: Staging Depth in Superman: The Movie’, The Digital in Depth: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Depth in Digital Media, University of Warwick, May 2014.

‘Beyond Kick-Ass Narratives: Exploring Formal Properties of Comic Books and Digital Media Converging in Cinematic Space’, Adventures in Textuality: Adaptation Studies in the 21st Century, University of Sunderland, April 2013.