Newcastle University

Roles and Responsibilities

Degree Programme Director - School of English undergraduate programmes.

Chair UG Board of Studies.

Chair UG Teaching Committee.

SEL representative Faculty Teaching, Learning and Student Experience Committee (FTLSEC). 

Steering Committee, Research Centre for Film and Digital Media. 

Qualifications

BA, MA, Ph.D

Previous Positions

Lecturer in Film, University of Portsmouth
Graduate Teaching Assistant, Gender Studies, University of Hull

Memberships

Women's History Network 

British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies 

Research Interests

My primary research interest is the relationship between gender and film, with an emphasis on production, representation and consumption. Within the context of British film and cinema I'm interested in women's involvement in the production process, gender and production cultures and textual femininities/screen representations of women.

I'm currently working on two major projects: a star study of Julie Christie which explores questions of performance and creative agency, and an economic history of women in the British film industry.  

Research Roles

Steering Committee member of Newcastle University's Research Centre for Film and Digital Media; member of the North East Regional Film Seminar Series (NERFSS).

Postgraduate Supervision

I welcome applications from prospective research students in the following areas: all aspects of British film and film culture (both fiction and non-fiction); film history; feminist film historiography; star studies.

Esteem Indicators

David H. Culbert Prize for Best Article by an Established Scholar, 2011 (awarded by the International Association for Media and History) for ‘Film Criticism as ‘Women’s Work’: the Gendered Economy of Film Criticism in Britain, 1945-65’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 31: 2, June 2011

Lecturer at the British Film Institute's Media Studies Conference (2009)
Keynote Address, 1950s Women Network Symposium (2009)
Steering Committee Member 'International Women's Film History Project - UK/Ireland Network'.
Contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2006);
Contributor to the Encyclopedia of British Film (2009)

Media Activity

January 2010, '1950s Feminity and British Film'. In conversation with Jane Garvey, Radio 4, Women's Hour.

December 2009, '1950s Feminity and British Film'. Interview with Radio Newcastle. References to my work have appeared in the The Journal and the Daily Mirror.

Funding

HASS Faculty Research Fund (2010)

AHRC Research Award Scheme (2008/9)
British Academy Research Grant (2006)

Undergraduate Teaching

Module convenor for Class, Nation and Identity (Stage 2 UG module)

I contribute to team-taught modules including Introduction to Literary Studies I and Independent Research Project.

Postgraduate Teaching

I contribute to team-taught modules including Approaches to Film (History, Theory, Practice); Stars (Systems, Theories, Nations); Cinematic Others; Research and Development I & II.

I supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations on a wide range of film topics including Hollywood Masculinity of the 1950s, British Social Realist Cinema, Todd Haynes and Melodrama, Jane Austin on Screen, David Cronenberg.

Postgraduate Supervision

Current Ph.D. Students
Katherine Cooper - Nationhood in the Fiction of Storm Jameson (AHRC) 

Rebecca Knight - Intergenerational Feminist Dialogue and the Contemporary Hollywood Women's Film

Dan Horn - Mabel Normand and the redefinition of women's roles in early American comedy cinema

Stephanie Oswald - Britain, France and Contemporary Cinema Cultures.

Current MLitt Students

Barbara Williams - British Heritage Cinema and Performance.  

Completed Ph.D. Students

Katherine Farrimond - Beyond Backlash: The Femme Fatale in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (AHRC)

Noel Brown - The Hollywood Family Film 

• Bell M. Femininity in the Frame: Women and 1950s British Popular Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.
• Bell-Williams M. ‘Shop-soiled’ Women: Female Sexuality and the Figure of the Prostitute in 1950s British Cinema. Journal of British Cinema and Television 2006, 3(2), 266-283.
• Bell-Williams M. Gender and modernity in post-war British cinema; a case study of Young Wives' Tale (1951). Women's History Review 2007, 16(2), 227-243.
• Bell M. Fatal Femininity in Post-War British Film: investigating the British femme. In: Hanson, H., O'Rawe, C, ed. The Femme Fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts. London: Palgrave, 2010, pp.256.
• Bell M. 'Quality', cinema and the 'superior woman' persona: Understanding women's film criticism in post-war Britain (1945-59). Women's History Review 2010, 19(5), 703-719.
• Bell M. 'A Prize Collection of Familiar Feminine Types': The Female Group Film in British Popular Cinema. In: Bell, M., Williams, M, ed. British Women’s Cinema. New York, USA: Routledge, 2009, pp.94-110.
• Bell M, Williams M. [Introduction] The Hour of the Cukoo: Reclaiming the British Woman’s Film. In: Bell, B., Williams, M, ed. British Women's Cinema. New York, USA: Routledge, 2009, pp.1-18.
• Bell M. Film Criticism as "Women's Work": the Gendered Economy of Film Criticism in Britain, 1945-65. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 2011, 31(2), 191-209.
• Bell M. Young, Single, Disillusioned: the Screen Heroine in 1960s British Cinema. Yearbook of English Studies 2012, 42(2). In Press.
• Bell M. Feminism and Women’s Film Criticism in Post-war Britain: 1945-59. Feminist Media Studies 2011, 11(4), 399-416.