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Professsor Claire Monk was conferred Professor of Film & Film Culture at DMU in 2016, having been Reader in Film & Film Culture since 2011. Her publications have contributed to DMU’s ascending research performance in Film and Screen Studies across four successive RAEs/REFs, most recently Unit of Assessment 33 in the Ì½»¨¾«Ñ¡ Excellence Framework 2021, in which more than 70% of our research was evaluated as internationally excellent or world leading.

Professor Monk specialises in the cultural, socio-political and contextual understanding of post-1960s and contemporary British film and film culture, across films with both period and contemporary settings – including bringing popular reception and the perspectives of audiences and fans into debates which have historically excluded them. Her work has ranged from interventions in the debates around period films and genres to questions of class, gender, sexuality, identity and place. She is known especially for:

• Her influential contributions as a ‘key voice’ re-shaping the debates around the cultural politics of the ‘heritage film’ (defined by Richard Dyer as ‘a text set in the past’, often ‘drawing upon a canonical source’, and ‘comprised of period costumes, decor and locations carefully recreated’).  Read more about the evolution of Claire’s work in this area in . Her work on ‘heritage cinema’ – and especially the films of Merchant Ivory Productions and director James Ivory (2018 Academy Award winner) – has been driven by a commitment to focusing attention on questions of gender, sexuality, pleasure and social critique, in a counterpoint to the overemphasis on nostalgia and ‘ideologies of Englishness’ which dominated critiques of these films from the early 1990s.

• Her wider work on representations in British film with reference to cultural, socio-economic, sexual and representational politics, particularly of the 1980s to 1990s Thatcher and Blair eras. Here, her interests include class, gender, sexuality and their intersections; shifting social realisms and the relationship between the British social-realist tradition, art cinema and populat genres; transnational representations and directors within British film (e.g. the UK films of Pawel Pawlikowski and Aki Kaurismäki); socio-economic, historical, urban and regional geographies and questions of place; and discourses and representations of regeneration and decline.

• From c.2010, Claire returned to ‘heritage films’ as viewed from the perspectives of real audiences and fans: represented in the monograph  (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) – the first and, to date, almost the only detailed empirical study of audience perspectives on period films or heritage culture – and its sequel ‘’, published in Participations (8:2, 2011), which explores the forms and implications of time-shifted, transnational 21st-century online fandom and fan productivity, centrally around Ivory’s E. M. Forster adaptations Maurice (1987) and A Room With A View (1985). Her ongoing work is increasingly interested in the connections and parallels between these perspectives and the insights yielded by textual histories and production studies.

Her wider interests and ongoing projects span the neglected field of ‘pre-heritage’ British period film and TV drama in the long 1970s; punk and post-punk music cultures and their impacts on British film; post-2000 trends in the ‘retro’ or historical representation of recent, late-20th-century decades in convergence with wider retro trends; post-2000 developments in the mediated representation of history/‘the past’ considered in relation to digitised archives and social media; and archive-led queer production studies (not least around Ivory’s 1987 Maurice).

In her pre-academic career, Claire worked as a print editor, copywriter and critic, include a decade as a contributor to the international film magazine Sight & Sound. Her media appearances range from BBC Radio 3’s  to talking about Ken Loach for TRT World television’s flagship arts programme Showcase. In both 2012 and 2022 she was an invited contributor to Sight & Sound’s famous once-a-decade of leading critics and filmmakers worldwide – and, in 2024, to its counterpoint, the global .

For four years from 2019/20 to 2022/23 Professor Monk served as one of DMU’s two Site Directors for the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership.

Professor Monk is always happy to hear from potential collaborators and prospective PhD students whose projects align with her interests and expertise.

• Institute of Arts, Design & Performance
• Cinema and Television History (CATH)
• Adaptations

Recent publications

‘“But you know, there have been queer characters from the very first film”: Call Me by Your Name and the long shadow of James Ivory’. In Call Me by Your Name: Perspectives on the Film, eds Michael Williams & Edward Lamberti (Bristol: Intellect) 2024, pp.34-57.

‘From costume romps to queer milestones: adaptation, collaboration, queerness and modernism in the ‘Long New Wave’ of Richardson, Schlesinger and Reisz’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 2024, 21:3, pp.378-401.

 Newly anthologised:‘“Where I come from, we eat places like this for breakfast”: Aki Kaurismäki’s I Hired A Contract Killer (1990) as transnational representation of local London’. In Global London on Screen: Visitors, Cosmopolitans and Migratory Cinematic Visions of a Superdiverse City, eds Keith B. Wagner & Roland-François Lack (Manchester: MUP), 2023, pp.93-106.

‘“Such emotional sterility proves ideal for the role”: Hugh Grant’s proto-celebrity and its media (self-)construction around Maurice’, Celebrity Studies, 2023, 14:1, pp.18-33.

‘Forster and adaptation: across time, media and methodologies’, Polish Journal of English Studies, 2021, 7:2, pp.139-175. (International E. M. Forster Society: Forster 50 Special Issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of Forster’s death.)

‘EMI and the “pre-heritage” period film’, Journal of British Cinema & Television, 2021, 18:1, pp.50-76.

‘Maurice without ending: from Forster’s palimpsest to fan-text’. In Twenty-First-Century Readings of E. M. Forster’s ‘Maurice’, eds Emma Sutton & Tsung-Han Tsai (Liverpool: LUP), 2021, pp.229-251.

Newly-commissioned, research-led, feature-film audio commentary (full film + deleted scenes: total 3 hours) for the British Film Institute’s 30th-anniversary UK Blu-ray premiere edition of James Ivory’s landmark 1987 LGBTQ film Maurice, 2019. . ‘Monk’s assembly and explanation of such unused material fascinates … revelatory, a glimpse into the cinematic process itself’ –

Monograph 

Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK (Edinburgh: EUP), HB 2011 / PB 2012.

Shorter key publications

‘Heritage Film Audiences 2.0: period film audiences and online fan cultures', Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies , 2011, 8:3, pp.431-477.

‘Sexuality and heritage’, in Film/Literature/Heritage: A Sight and Sound Reader, ed. Ginette Vincendeau (London: British Film Institute) 2001, pp.6-11. Anthologised from original publication in Sight and Sound, Oct 1995, 5:10, pp.32-4.

‘Underbelly UK: the 1990s underclass film, masculinity and the ideologies of “New” Britain’, in British Cinema, Past and Present, eds Justine Ashby & Andrew Higson (London & New York: Routledge), 2000, pp.274-87.

‘The heritage film and gendered spectatorship’, CloseUp: The Electronic Journal of British Cinema, 1997, Issue 1. Archived in two parts:     

Claire Monk & Amy Sargeant (eds) British Historical Cinema: The History, Heritage and Costume Film (London & New York: Routledge), 2002.

British Film. Film Culture & Criticism. Audience & Reception Studies. Archival ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ & Production Studies. Literature & Adaptations. James Ivory & Merchant Ivory Productions. Heritage Cinema, Period Film & Television, Historical Fictions, History in Media. UK Heritage Industries & Institutions. UK Arts, Film, Culture and Creative Industries & Institutions. Queer Literature, Cultural History & Cinema. Queer Archives & Production Studies. Class, Gender & Sexuality in Film & Media. Popular Reception, Fandom, Fan Productivity, Fanworks & Fan-Adaptations. Digital/Participatory/Social Media.  E. M. Forster, Queer Forster, Forster & Adaptation. Punk & Post-Punk. London Histories, London on Film, London Media. Women’s Cinema/Women Filmmakers. Black British Cinema. Independent Film. Third Cinemas. Community Film, Video, Photography & Archives.

Post-1960 and Contemporary British Cinema, World Cinemas, The Past on Film, Foundation of Film Studies (Theory, Criticism & History).

• PhD, School of Arts, Middlesex University, UK, 2007. (Full-time scholarship in Middlebrow Culture, Audiences and Taste, supervised by Professor Francis Mulhern.) 
• PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Adult & Higher Education, Birkbeck, University of London, UK, 1998.
• MA with Distinction in Cinema and Television Studies, British Film Institute in association with the University of London, 1994.
• BA Hons 2:1 in Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE), Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK, 1986. (Williams Exhibitioner. Personal tutor Alan Montefiore.)

• Currently: FILM1102 Foundations of Film Studies, FILM3113 British Cinema, FILM3114 Film Studies Dissertation Tutor.
• Formerly: FILM2007 & FILM2401 World Cinemas, FILM2502 Contemporary British Cinema, FILM3404 The Past on Film – all developed and led as new modules.
• PhD & MPhil supervisions.
• MRes (MA by ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡) supervisions.

 

& 2012: Invited contributor in two successive decades to  to Sight & Sound magazine’s famous once-a-decade poll of leading critics and filmmakers worldwide, considered the most influential (and certainly most-debated) of its kind. (In 2012, one of only 26 UK academics – and 9 UK female academics – then below Professor level invited to contribute.)

2017–: Elected to the AHRC (UKRI) Peer Review College.

2016–: Member by invitation of the International E. M. Forster Society.

2016: Cinema & Television History (CATH) ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ Centre, team winner of the DMU OSCAR Award for Outstanding Contribution to ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ Excellence.

• AAS (International Association of Adaptation Studies), 2009–
• ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Copyright Society), 2011–
• BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies), 2012–
• Fan Studies Network, 2012–
• International E. M. Forster Society (by invitation), 2016–
• MeCCSA (Media, Cultural and Communication Studies Association), 2006–

Conferences and panels as organiser

Peer-review and hosting committee: Console-ing Passions: 21^st International Conference on Television, Video, Audio, New Media and Feminism, DMU, 23-25 Jun 2013.

Panel organiser: ‘E. M. Forster’s Maurice (1913/1971) and 25 years of James Ivory’s Maurice (1987): adaptation(s), authorship(s) and reappraisal(s)’, 7th Annual Conference of the Association of Adaptation Studies (AAS): Visible and Invisible Authorships, University of York, UK, 27-28 Sep 2012.

Conference instigator and joint organiser: Adapting Historical Narratives Conference, DMU Centre for Adaptations, 28 Feb 2012.

Public event instigator/curator/organiser: African Classic Film Screening and Discussion: Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Badou Boy (1970), with panellists Professor Patrick Williams (Nottingham Trent University) and Lizelle Bisschoff (Director, Africa in Motion Film Festival), DMU Cultural Exchanges Festival 2010, 2 Mar 2010.

 

As keynote or other invited speaker:

‘Messing with masculinities: Post-Thatcher British cinema’s other men since the 1990s’, Film After Thatcher: Gender and Sexuality in post-1990 British Cinema, Liverpool Hope University, UK, 2 Jul 2014. (Keynote)

‘“The shadow of this time”: tradition and history, alchemy and multiplicity in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee (1978)’, Early Modern Jarman Symposium, King’s College London, UK, 1 Feb 2014. Part of the year-long Jarman 2014 commemoration. (Invited speaker)

‘Heritage films and their audiences: fan perspectives and practices and why they matter’, Screening European Heritage, University of Leeds, 12-13 Sep 2013. An outcome of the AHRC-funded Screening European Heritage scoping study and network. (Keynote)

‘From Lypton Village to London Goth: Virgin Prunes in England, c. 1982-4’, A Special Relationship? Irish Popular Music in Britain, Northumbia University, UK, in conjunction with the University of Ulster Centre for Media ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡, 27-8 June 2012 (Invited plenary speaker)

‘Web 2.0 fandom and James Ivory’s/E. M. Forster’s Maurice (UK, 1987) – or: Tumblr, LiveJournal and YouTube, the life of texts and the redundancy of “heritage-film” criticism’, Pursuing the Trivial: Investigations into Popular Culture, University of Vienna/Vienna University of Applied Arts, Austria, 1-2 Jun 2012. (Keynote, postgraduate conference)

‘Ken Loach in England: work and the working classes under neo-liberalism and globalisation’, From 'Hidden Agenda' to the 'Free World': The political films of Ken Loach, study day, BFI (British Film Institute) Southbank, London, in association with Royal Holloway University of London, 1 Oct 2011. (Invited speaker, directly after Channel 4 News / formerly BBC Newsnight Economics Editor Paul Mason)

‘Majesty/alchemy/anarchy: fashionable and unfashionable queens in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee (1978)’, Fashionable Queens: Body, Power, Gender Symposium, Institute for English Studies & Institute for Sociology, University of Vienna, Austria, 3-4 Dec 2010. (Paper delivered in absentia due to flight cancellations.) 

Keynote speaker plus film introduction to Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (UK, 2009), Radical British Screens symposium, University of the West of England (UWE) & Screen South-West ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ Network, UWE/Arnolfini Arts Centre, Bristol, UK, 3 Sep 2010. 

‘Not represented: on absences, specificities and post-punk music cultures in post-2000 British film’, British Film 2000–2010: Crossing Borders, Transferring Cultures, Centre for Intercultural Studies/Faculty of Translation, Sprache und Kultur, Johannes-Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, 18-21 Feb 2010. (Invited plenary speaker)

‘“Not new wave. It’s inspired by punk.” The post-punk female in British film: Hazel O’Connor and Breaking Glass’, Post-Punk Performance: The Alternative 80s in Britain, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, UK, 9 Sep 2009. (Invited speaker)

‘Beyond the heritage debate: investigating period-film audiences’, Representation. Period: A Study Day in Representations, History and Nostalgia in Period Film and Television, University of Sussex, UK, 15 Sep 2005. Keynote speaker.

, produced by Simon Elmes and presented by Laurence Scott for BBC Radio 3, broadcast 6 Apr 2014. Expert contributor and sole academic interviewee (alongside novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, actress Helena Bonham-Carter and others) for this programme on the films and record-breaking filmmaking and personal partnership of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter and novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. 

: consulted as expert source for a feature on BBC3’s cult series Monkey Dust (2003-5): ‘’, by Dan Wilkinson, 20 May 2015. My 2007 refereed journal article ‘London and contemporary Britain in Monkey Dust’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 4:2, was the first (and remains virtually the only) academic appraisal of Monkey Dust.

AHRC Screening European Heritage project, University of Leeds: interviewed as an invited leading expert source, , published 25 Jul 2013.

, Somethin’ Else Productions for BBC Radio 4, presented by novelist Naomi Alderman, broadcast 26 Nov 2012. Consulted during the programme’s development by Somethin’ Else’s Head of Features Russell Finch.

Invited contributor in 2022 & 2012 to Sight & Sound magazine’s world-famous, once-a-decade Greatest Films of All Time Poll of leading critics and filmmakers worldwide, considered one of the most influential of its kind.

‘Cameras in pursuit of the unfilmable’ by Andrew Johnson, , 6 Jun 2010, pp.24-25. Consulted as expert and quoted in feature on the adaptation of ‘unfilmable’ novels.

Subsstantial contribution to project research, authorship of lead DVD/Blu-ray booklet essay, and media coverage for the British Film Institute’s Flipside DVD/Blu-ray release of three ‘lost’ films by the iconoclastic, radical, feminist British filmmaker, actor and theatre-maker 1937–2024), Jul-Aug 2009. ‘Always too early’’: DVD/Blu-ray booklet essay for (1967), released Jul 2009. ‘Long live the ghosts’: feature for Sight & Sound, Aug 2009.

 

PhD/MPhil research students: completions

Caroline Langhorst (Germany/UK), PhD. ‘Let Us Compare Mythologies’ or Raising Hell?:  Rebellious Actors in 1960s British Cinema, 2023. 2nd supervisor.

Anthony S. Peppiatt (UK), PhD (AHRC Midlands3Cities Scholarship – co-supervision with Professor Martin O’Shaughnessy, NTU). The Children’s Film Foundation: An Investigation into the Decline and Fall of a Unique British Institution, 2021. 2nd supervisor.

Laura Fryer (UK), PhD (AHRC Midlands3Cities Scholarship). The Adapted Screenplays of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, 2020. 2nd supervisor.

Françoise Poos (Luxembourg), PhD. The Making of a National Audio-Visual Archive: The CNA [Centre nationale de l’audiovisuel, Luxembourg] and the Hidden Images Exhibition, 2016. 2nd supervisor.

Caitlin Shaw (Canada), PhD. Remediating the Eighties: Nostalgia and Retro in British Screen Fiction from 2005 to 2011, 2015. 1st supervisor.

Takako Seino (Japan), MPhil. ,Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema, 2011. De facto 1st supervisor.

Masters by ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡: completions:

Andrew Johnstone (UK), MA Independent Study. Documentary Film in International Development, 2013.

Llewella Burton (UK), MA Independent Study. Interpretation as Practice: Chasing the Post-Heritage Dream, 2012.

Member of the AHRC (UKRI) Peer Review College: Appointed 2017, currently serving my third term as a reviewer to 2027.

DMU Site Director for the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership (comprising eight leading Midlands universities), 2019/20–2022/23.

Journal Editorial Board Member: Journal of British Cinema & Television (Edinburgh University Press) since 2012.

Referee for peer-reviewed journals including Adaptation (Oxford University Press), Canadian Journal of Film Studies (Film Studies Association of Canada/Concordia University), Consumption, Markets and Culture (Taylor & Francis), Critical Studies in Media Communication (University of Illinois), European Journal of Cultural Studies (Sage), European Journal of Life Writing (University of Groningen Press), Film–Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press), Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance (Intellect), Journal of British Cinema & Television (Edinburgh University Press), The Minnesota Review (Duke University Press), Polish Journal of English Studies (Polish Association for the Study of English), Punk & Post-Punk (Intellect), Rethinking History (Taylor & Francis).

Peer review for publishers including Amsterdam University Press, Bloomsbury Academic (USA & UK), BFI Publishing (British Film Institute– Palgrave, Bloomsbury), Manchester University Press, McGill–Queens University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge.

• Newly commissioned feature-film audio commentary (full film + deleted scenes: total 3 hours) for the British Film Institute’s 30th-anniversary re-release and , 2019. My commentary was informed by the unique research sources in the James Ivory Papers at the University of Oregon. To date, I am the only scholar to have drawn on Ivory’s Maurice production files in my work. My commentary was singled out for acclaim in The Arts Desk’s review of the BFI’s Blu-ray release: 

‘Monk’s assembly and explanation of such unused material fascinates … revelatory, a glimpse into the cinematic process itself’ – 

• In addition, for Maurice‘s 30th-anniversary 4K digital restoration and its Blu-ray premiere release in both the US and UK, I conducted a substantial new interview with Maurice’s star James Wilby (1987 Venice Film Festival Best Actor, jointly with second-billed co-star Hugh Grant), again drawing on my unique reseach in Ivory’s Maurice production archive, which was published in the Blu-ray booklet for both editions (Cohen Media Group, 2017, USA; BFI, 2019, UK).

• , produced by Simon Elmes and presented by Laurence Scott for BBC Radio 3, first broadcast 2014 and . Expert contributor and sole academic interviewee (alongside novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, actress Helena Bonham-Carter and others) for this programme on the films and record-breaking filmmaking and personal partnership of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter and novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

• AHRC  project, University of Leeds: invited expert source/witness for a scoping study that reported to European policymakers and the UK House of Lords, including a , 2013.

• AHRC project and conference Channel Four and British Film Culture, University of Portsmouth/British Universities’ Film & Video Council (BUFVC) at BFI Southbank, London, 1-2 Nov 2012. Plenary paper, ‘Forgotten histories? Film on Four and British retro and heritage films of the 1980s’, was a featured conference audio recording on the . 

• ‘Eyre conditioning’: invited feature on the new big-screen Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga, 2011; starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender) for Sight & Sound, Oct 2011.

• Invited speaker, From 'Hidden Agenda' to the 'Free World': The political films of Ken Loach study day held at BFI (British Film Institute) Southbank, London, 1 Oct 2011, speaking directly after Channel 4 News / formerly BBC Newsnight Economics Editor Paul Mason.

• Contribution to project research, authorship of lead DVD/Blu-ray booklet essay, and media coverage for the British Film Institute’s Flipside DVD/Blu-ray release of three ‘lost’ films by the iconoclastic British femiinst filmmaker, actor and theatre-maker  (1927–1982) and her partner  (1937–2024), Jul-Aug 2009. ‘Always too early’’: DVD/Blu-ray booklet essay for (1967), released Jul 2009. ‘Long live the ghosts’: feature for Sight & Sound, Aug 2009. 

• Invited talks at world-class venues including BFI Southbank (London) and the Arnolfini (Bristol). Talks at local venues engaging local communities and young people have included National Trust’s Sutton House (London Borugh of Hackney), Barking & Dagenham Malthouse Monthly Film Club (a cultural regeneration initiative in the London Borugh of Barking & Dagenham), and Phoenix Cinema & Digital Media Centre (Leicester).