I am currently the Programme Director for French, and for a number of years was the director of the combined undergraduate degrees in Global Cinema and Literature & Cinema. I did my PhD at Cornell University, and my undergraduate degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I taught at Cornell, Hamilton College, and the State University of New York before coming to the UK in 1995. After writing my first book on early twentieth-century French colonial culture (The Colonial Unconscious), I moved into film studies, writing books on the work of film pioneer Georges Méliès and contemporary French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet, as well as editing books on European cinema, French cinema, and transnational cinema. I have also written on early Hollywood cinema, film and material culture, exoticism, and posthumanism. My latest books are Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film (co-edited with Catherine Wheatley, Edinburgh University Press 2020), and The Cinema of Things: Globalization and the Posthuman Object (Bloomsbury 2017). I have published articles in/edited special issues of journals such as Screen, Yale French Studies, Diacritics, and Children's Literature. I am on the advisory boards of the journals French Screen Studies, French Cultural Studies, and Studies in European Cinema, and the editorial board of the Film Studies book series at the University of Edinburgh Press. I am currently co-editing a special issue of Film-Philosophy with Catherine Wheatley on The Objects of Cinema, and have also recently begun working in the field of children's literature and cinema.
My most recent book, co-edited with Catherine Wheatley, is Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), which builds on research into film and material culture for my earlier single-authored book The Cinema of Things: Globalization and the Posthuman Object (Bloomsbury 2017). The Cinema of Things traces the progressive redrawing of the boundaries between human beings and objects in cinematic representations of commodity culture, objectification, and technological supplementation. More recently, I have been working in the field of children's literature and cinema, publishing an article in the journal Children's Literature on witches and the ethics of alterity in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials. I am currently editing (with Catherine Wheatley) a special issue of the journal Film-Philosophy on The Objects of Cinema. I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students in any of the fields outlined in my Biography, including practice-based research (I am also an award-winning children's author).
French Cinema, Exoticism, and Commodity Culture
PI: Professor Elizabeth Ezra
Funded by: The Leverhulme Trust
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Article
Introduction to Special Issue: Film Objects
Ezra E & Wheatley C (2023) Introduction to Special Issue: Film Objects. Film-Philosophy, 27 (1), pp. 1-6. https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/film.2023.0213; https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2023.0213
Book Chapter
Magic Shoes: Dorothy, Cinderella, Carrie
Ezra E (2020) Magic Shoes: Dorothy, Cinderella, Carrie. In: Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film. 1st ed. Film and Fashions. UK: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 49-61. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-shoe-reels.html
Edited Book
Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film
(2020) Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film, 1st ed. Film and Fashions. UK: Edinburgh University Press. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-shoe-reels.html
Article
Ezra E (2020) Out of Bounds: The Spatial Politics of Civility in The Square (Ostlund, 2017) and Happy End (Haneke, 2017). Northern Lights, 18 (1), pp. 103-113. https://doi.org/10.1386/nl_00016_1
Article
Becoming Familiar: Witches and Companion Animals in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials
Ezra E (2019) Becoming Familiar: Witches and Companion Animals in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials [Ezra Becoming Familiar Children's Literature]. Children's Literature, 47 (1), pp. 175-196. https://doi.org/10.1353/chl.2019.0009
Article
The Screen Test 1915-1930: How Stars Were Born
Ezra E & Salzberg A (2017) The Screen Test 1915-1930: How Stars Were Born. Celebrity Studies, 8 (3), pp. 477-488. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2017.1312469
Authored Book
The Cinema of Things: Globalization and the Posthuman Object
Ezra E (2017) The Cinema of Things: Globalization and the Posthuman Object. New York and London: Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-cinema-of-things-9781501328855/
Book Chapter
"Un femme est inf?me": Godard’s Writing Lesson
Ezra E (2014) "Un femme est inf?me": Godard’s Writing Lesson ['”Un femme [sic] est inf?me": Godard’s Writing Lesson’]. In: Conley T & Kline T (eds.) A Companion to Jean-Luc Godard. Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Film Directors, 10. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 60-70. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470659262.html
Article
Posthuman memory and the re(f)use economy
Ezra E (2014) Posthuman memory and the re(f)use economy. French Cultural Studies, 25 (3-4), pp. 378-386. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957155814543891
Book Chapter
Digging up the Past: Jules et Jim
Ezra E (2013) Digging up the Past: Jules et Jim. In: Andrew D & Gillain A (eds.) A Companion to Fran?ois Truffaut. Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Film Directors. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 434-447. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405198478.html
Article
Cléo's Masks: Regimes of Objectification in the French New Wave
Ezra E (2010) Cléo's Masks: Regimes of Objectification in the French New Wave. Yale French Studies, 118/119, pp. 177-190. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41337086
Article
Traces of the Modern: An Alternative History of French Cinema
Beugnet M & Ezra E (2010) Traces of the Modern: An Alternative History of French Cinema. Studies in French Cinema, 10 (1), pp. 11-38. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/sfc.10.1.11/1
Article
A portrait of the twenty-first century
Beugnet M & Ezra E (2009) A portrait of the twenty-first century. Screen, 50 (1), pp. 77-85. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjn072
Book Chapter
Postcolonial Transplants: Cinema, Diaspora and the Body Politic
Ezra E & Rowden T (2009) Postcolonial Transplants: Cinema, Diaspora and the Body Politic. In: Keown M, Murphy D & Procter J (eds.) Comparing Postcolonial Diasporas. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 211-227. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=280276
Authored Book
Ezra E (2008) Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Contemporary Film Directors. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/68fgt4xc9780252033186.html
Article
Hidden in plain sight: bringing terror home
Ezra E & Sillars J (2007) Hidden in plain sight: bringing terror home. Screen, 48 (2), pp. 215-221. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjm017
Book Chapter
National Cinemas in the Global Era
Ezra E (2007) National Cinemas in the Global Era. In: Cook P (ed.) The Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 168-170. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=305352
Article
Ezra E & Sillars J (2007) Introduction. Screen, 48 (2), pp. 211-213. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjm016
Book Chapter
General Introduction: What is Transnational Cinema?
Ezra E & Rowden T (2006) General Introduction: What is Transnational Cinema?. In: Ezra E & Rowden T (eds.) Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader. In Focus: Routledge Film Readers. London and New York: Routledge, p. 12. https://www.routledge.com/Transnational-Cinema-The-Film-Reader/Ezra-Rowden/p/book/9780415371582
Book Chapter
Becoming Women: Cinema, Gender and Technology
Ezra E (2006) Becoming Women: Cinema, Gender and Technology. In: Holmes D & Tarr C (eds.) A 'Belle Epoque'? Women in French Society and Culture 1890-1914. Polygons: Cultural Diversities and Intersections. New York and London: Berghahn, pp. 125-136. http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HolmesBelle
Edited Book
Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader
Ezra E & Rowden T (eds.) (2006) Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader. In Focus: Routledge Film Readers. Oxon and New York: Routledge. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415371582/
Article
The Case of the phantom fetish: Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires
Ezra E (2006) The Case of the phantom fetish: Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires. Screen, 47 (2), pp. 201-211. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjl016
Article
L'Auberge espagnole (2002): transnational departure or domestic crash landing?
Ezra E & Sanchez A (2005) L'Auberge espagnole (2002): transnational departure or domestic crash landing?. Studies in European Cinema, 2 (2), pp. 137-148. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/seci.2.2.137/1?journalCode=rseu20
Book Chapter
The Cinemising Process: Filmgoing in the Silent Era
Ezra E (2004) The Cinemising Process: Filmgoing in the Silent Era. In: Temple M & Witt M (eds.) The French Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 74-81. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=307912
Edited Book
Ezra E (ed.) (2004) European Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/FilmMediaPerformingArts/FilmStudies/?view=usa&ci=9780199255719
Article
Resurrecting the alien director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet in Hollywood
Ezra E (2002) Resurrecting the alien director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet in Hollywood. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 1 (1), pp. 54-60.
Edited Book
France in Focus: Film and National Identity
Ezra E (ed.) (2000) France in Focus: Film and National Identity. Oxford and New York: Berg. http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/france-in-focus-9781859733639/
Authored Book
Ezra E (2000) Georges Melies. French Film Directors. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Authored Book
The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France
Ezra E (2000) The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100181620