Joel Casey

Thesis Title: Race, Performance, and Cinema in Interwar Britain

Supervisor: Laura Marcus

Research Interests: Cinema, especially silent and British cinema; film history; film performance, stardom, and acting; urban studies; the body and the senses. 

Doctoral research: My thesis explores the roles played by 'race' in British cinema culture in the 1920s and early 1930s. Using case studies of the 'Eastern' film, the Limehouse film, the expedition film and the documentary, it argues that relationships between spectator, performer, and setting/stage are mediated by race for British filmmakers, critics, and commentators. It then demonstrates that this informs arguments for the value of cinema as medium and artform, of certain kinds of film performance, and of a specifically 'British' national cinema.