BOOKS
BFI Classics Series: The Empire Strikes Back (BFI, 2020 - order it here).
A Star Wars World: Material Histories of a Global Franchise (forthcoming, Bloomsbury).
From Steam to Screen: Cinema, the Railways and Modernity (I B Tauris, 2018) - available here.
ACADEMIC ARTICLES
You can read all my articles either by clicking links for free access online, or by downloading the pre-print PDFs below.
“I Won't Look: Refusing to Engage with Gender-Based Violence in Women-Led Screen Media,” in The Routledge Companion to Gender, Media and Violence, edited by Karen Boyle and Susan Berridge (London: Routledge, 2023). You can order library copies of the book at https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Gender-Media-and-Violence/Boyle-Berridge/p/book/9781032061368 or contact me for access to the chapter.
“Mabel, Marilyn, and Me: Writing about Mabel Normand as a Feminist Film Historian,” Early Popular Visual Culture 1, no.23 (2023): 152-172. The open access article is available to read or download at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460654.2023.2160420.
“Telephone Networks and Transactional Motherhood in Channel 4's It's A Sin,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, first published online July 2020. The article is freely available to read and download at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13675494221106496.
“Gender, Race, and Representation in the Star Wars Franchise: An Introduction,” Media Education Journal, no. 65 (2019): 16-19.
The article offers a short and accessible introductory analysis of gender and race representation in the Star Wars franchise and is a resource for teachers and students in secondary education/high school classrooms. You can download the pdf at the bottom of the page.
“Fuck the Canon (or, How Do You Solve a Problem Like von Trier?): Teaching, Screening, and Writing About Cinema in the Age of #MeToo,” MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture 1, no. 2 (2018): online - read it here. You can also read the article in German: FILMLÖWIN, May 11, 2020 - read it here.
Richard Wallace, Rebecca Harrison, and Charlotte Brunsdon, “Toward a History of Women Projectionists in Post-war British Cinemas,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 15, no. 1 (2017): 46-65.
“The Coming of the Projectionettes: Women’s Work in Film Projection and Changing Modes of Spectatorship in Second World War British Cinemas,” Feminist Media Histories 2, no. 2 (2016).
This article investigates women’s roles as projectionists, and transformations to women’s spectatorship, in Britain during the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1945, the British Cinema Exhibition Association (CEA), among other organisation, encouraged women to train as cinema projectionists when the government conscripted men into the armed forces. Here, the paper traces histories of the ‘projectionettes’ and their daily, working lives through archival materials and the trade press to consider how women’s labour contributed to British film exhibition. Moreover, by situating the women projectionists’ work in a broader narrative about gendered spectatorship, the article proposes that owing to changing labour conditions, women gained new perspectives throughout the movie theatre.
“Writing History on the Page and Screen: Mediating Conflict through Britain’s First World War Ambulance Trains,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 3 (2015).
This article examines how different forms of writing mediate the past. In doing so, I focus on two ostensibly distinct types of authorship: the light writing projected onscreen, and the life-writings found in letters and diaries. Between 1914 and 1919 in Britain, cinema and personal testimonies intervened in historiography in apparent opposition to one another. It is easy for us now to assume that state-censored, propagandistic movies narrated the state’s version of the First World War, while secret, illegal accounts written by personnel on the Front line described actuality. However, a study of British ambulance trains reveals that films and life-writings have a shared vocabulary, which complicates the two media’s connections to history, and to one another.
“Inside the Cinema Train: Britain, Empire and Modernity in the Twentieth Century,” Film History 26, no.4 (2014): 32-57.
The article offers the first comprehensive examination of the cinema train in Britain. From film’s inception to the present day, journeys, movement and travel have been inscribed in the language, aesthetics and distribution of film. The paper argues that the history of the movie coach expands our understanding of exhibition and distribution networks in twentieth-century Britain, particularly with regard to news consumption. Using contemporary press reports, archived documents and the newsreels shown in the carriages, the article also articulates how narratives about the nation’s empire and self-projected modernity influenced the cinema train’s construction.
You can also read a translation of the article in German: “Im Kinozug. Großbritannien, das Empire und die Moderne im Zwanzigsten Jahrhundert,” montage AV. Zeitschrift für Theorie und Geschichte audiovisueller Kommunikation 26, no.1 (2017): 129-148.
“Haunted Screens and Spiritual Scenes: Film as a Medium in the Cinema of Carl Theodor Dreyer,” Scandinavica 48, no. 1 (2009): 31-36.
In exploring the nature of cinematic self-reflexivity, the article investigates the relationship between the medium of film and Dreyer’s interest in the spiritual and religious experience. It draws upon Freud’s concept of the ‘Uncanny’ to determine the boundaries of cinematic space and time in relation to the transience of life and death, as represented onscreen.
BFI Classics Series: The Empire Strikes Back (BFI, 2020 - order it here).
A Star Wars World: Material Histories of a Global Franchise (forthcoming, Bloomsbury).
From Steam to Screen: Cinema, the Railways and Modernity (I B Tauris, 2018) - available here.
ACADEMIC ARTICLES
You can read all my articles either by clicking links for free access online, or by downloading the pre-print PDFs below.
“I Won't Look: Refusing to Engage with Gender-Based Violence in Women-Led Screen Media,” in The Routledge Companion to Gender, Media and Violence, edited by Karen Boyle and Susan Berridge (London: Routledge, 2023). You can order library copies of the book at https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Gender-Media-and-Violence/Boyle-Berridge/p/book/9781032061368 or contact me for access to the chapter.
“Mabel, Marilyn, and Me: Writing about Mabel Normand as a Feminist Film Historian,” Early Popular Visual Culture 1, no.23 (2023): 152-172. The open access article is available to read or download at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460654.2023.2160420.
“Telephone Networks and Transactional Motherhood in Channel 4's It's A Sin,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, first published online July 2020. The article is freely available to read and download at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13675494221106496.
“Gender, Race, and Representation in the Star Wars Franchise: An Introduction,” Media Education Journal, no. 65 (2019): 16-19.
The article offers a short and accessible introductory analysis of gender and race representation in the Star Wars franchise and is a resource for teachers and students in secondary education/high school classrooms. You can download the pdf at the bottom of the page.
“Fuck the Canon (or, How Do You Solve a Problem Like von Trier?): Teaching, Screening, and Writing About Cinema in the Age of #MeToo,” MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture 1, no. 2 (2018): online - read it here. You can also read the article in German: FILMLÖWIN, May 11, 2020 - read it here.
Richard Wallace, Rebecca Harrison, and Charlotte Brunsdon, “Toward a History of Women Projectionists in Post-war British Cinemas,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 15, no. 1 (2017): 46-65.
“The Coming of the Projectionettes: Women’s Work in Film Projection and Changing Modes of Spectatorship in Second World War British Cinemas,” Feminist Media Histories 2, no. 2 (2016).
This article investigates women’s roles as projectionists, and transformations to women’s spectatorship, in Britain during the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1945, the British Cinema Exhibition Association (CEA), among other organisation, encouraged women to train as cinema projectionists when the government conscripted men into the armed forces. Here, the paper traces histories of the ‘projectionettes’ and their daily, working lives through archival materials and the trade press to consider how women’s labour contributed to British film exhibition. Moreover, by situating the women projectionists’ work in a broader narrative about gendered spectatorship, the article proposes that owing to changing labour conditions, women gained new perspectives throughout the movie theatre.
“Writing History on the Page and Screen: Mediating Conflict through Britain’s First World War Ambulance Trains,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 3 (2015).
This article examines how different forms of writing mediate the past. In doing so, I focus on two ostensibly distinct types of authorship: the light writing projected onscreen, and the life-writings found in letters and diaries. Between 1914 and 1919 in Britain, cinema and personal testimonies intervened in historiography in apparent opposition to one another. It is easy for us now to assume that state-censored, propagandistic movies narrated the state’s version of the First World War, while secret, illegal accounts written by personnel on the Front line described actuality. However, a study of British ambulance trains reveals that films and life-writings have a shared vocabulary, which complicates the two media’s connections to history, and to one another.
“Inside the Cinema Train: Britain, Empire and Modernity in the Twentieth Century,” Film History 26, no.4 (2014): 32-57.
The article offers the first comprehensive examination of the cinema train in Britain. From film’s inception to the present day, journeys, movement and travel have been inscribed in the language, aesthetics and distribution of film. The paper argues that the history of the movie coach expands our understanding of exhibition and distribution networks in twentieth-century Britain, particularly with regard to news consumption. Using contemporary press reports, archived documents and the newsreels shown in the carriages, the article also articulates how narratives about the nation’s empire and self-projected modernity influenced the cinema train’s construction.
You can also read a translation of the article in German: “Im Kinozug. Großbritannien, das Empire und die Moderne im Zwanzigsten Jahrhundert,” montage AV. Zeitschrift für Theorie und Geschichte audiovisueller Kommunikation 26, no.1 (2017): 129-148.
“Haunted Screens and Spiritual Scenes: Film as a Medium in the Cinema of Carl Theodor Dreyer,” Scandinavica 48, no. 1 (2009): 31-36.
In exploring the nature of cinematic self-reflexivity, the article investigates the relationship between the medium of film and Dreyer’s interest in the spiritual and religious experience. It draws upon Freud’s concept of the ‘Uncanny’ to determine the boundaries of cinematic space and time in relation to the transience of life and death, as represented onscreen.
| rharrison_-_gender_and_race_in_star_wars.pdf |
| rharrison_coming_of_the_projectionettes_working_copy.pdf |
| rharrison_inside_the_cinema_train_working_paper.pdf |
| rharrison_-_writing_history_on_the_page_and_screen_working_copy.pdf |
| r_harrison_haunted_screens_scandinavica_2009.pdf |