Staff Profile

Background

After graduating from the University of Birmingham with a degree in French and Italian, I worked for two years as an EFL teacher in Poland and Portugal before returning to the UK to study for a PhD on French cinema at the University of Exeter, awarded in 2002. I worked as a Film Studies Lecturer at Northumbria University from 2001-5 before coming to Newcastle.

Roles and Responsibilities

Current: SML Director, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion; Acting Programme Director, MA Film Theory and Practice

Director of Postgraduate Studies, SML (2010-2015)

Co-director of the MA in International Film: History, Theory, Practice (2006-2010)

Co-ordinator, Film and Visual Arts field of study, SML (2006-2010)

Qualifications

PhD: 'Simone Signoret and Brigitte Bardot: Femininities in 1950s French Cinema', University of Exeter. Awarded 2002.
BA Combined Hons in French and Italian, University of Birmingham, 1994.

Previous Positions

2001-2005: Lecturer in Film Studies, Northumbria University
1999-2001: Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Exeter.
1997-1999: Lectrice, Université de Versailles et Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines

Memberships

Society for Studies in French Cinema.

British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS)

Network for European Cinema Studies (NECS)

Screenwriting Research Network

Languages

French and Italian

Informal Interests

Going to the cinema.
Hill-walking, cycling and swimming.

Research Interests

French cinema from the 1930s to the present day; stars, stardom and questions of national identity; cinema audiences and theories of spectatorship; questions of representation and identity.

Current Work

I am working on a co-authored monograph (with Isabelle Vanderschelden) for Manchester University Press on Screenwriters in French Cinema. This builds on my work on the cinematic collaborations of the Groupe Octobre, examining the relationship between cinema and theatre in the early 1930s, and on contemporary writer-director, Agnès Jaoui.

Research Roles
Member of AHRC Peer Review College.

Postgraduate Supervision

I welcome applications for postgraduate research in the following areas:
French cinema from the 1930s to the present day, most particularly in the following areas:
stars and stardom; screenwriters; theories of gender and sexuality and film; film criticism and film history.

Esteem Indicators

Invited speaker at:

Journée d'études, 'Casque d'or: lectures croisées', organised for students preparing the agrégation in French by the University of Nanterre-Paris Ouest. 13 February 2010, Institut National pour l'histoire de l'art.

Screening event, Fait-divers (Claude Autant-Lara, 1923), BFI London. Part of the 4th Fashion in Film Festival, Marcel L'Herbier, Fabricating Dreams, 10-19 May 2013.

Colloque: 'Des livres aux scénarios. Approches interdisciplinaires des archives du cinéma français (1930-1960)', 10-11 October 2016, Université de Lausanne and Cinémathèque suisse

Colloque: 'Studies in French Cinema to French Screen Studies: Continuity, Change, Perspectives', Université Lumière Lyon 2, November 2020

Funding

2007-8 British Academy Small Research Grant

2005-6 AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award
2004-5 AHRC Research Leave
2003-4 University of Northumbria Small Research Grant
2002-3 University of Northumbria Small Research Grant
2000 AHRB Study Abroad Grant 

Keywords

Film Studies; French Cinema; Film History; Screenwriters

Undergraduate Teaching

Contemporary French Cinema (Stage 4, co-taught with Guy Austin)
Classic French Cinema (Stage 2)
Introduction to International Film (Stage 1)

Postgraduate Teaching

MA International Film: History, Theory, Practice

Researching Film: Skills and Methods

Approaches to Film History and Theory
Exhibition Cultures

Stars: Systems, Theories, Nations

Professional Placement

• Leahy S. '"Une vraie famille Benetton": Maternal metaphors of nation in Il y a longtemps que je t'aime - a response to Susan Hayward'. In: Higbee, W. and Leahy, S, ed. Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives 1985-2010. Bristol: Intellect, 2010, pp.153-165.
• Leahy S. Hats, Hotels, Mayhem and Marx: Film, Theatre and the Cinematic Collaborations of the Groupe Octobre, 1932–1936. Modern & Contemporary France 2010, 18(3), 357-374.
• Higbee W, Leahy S, ed. Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives, 1985-2010. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2011.
• Leahy S. A (middle) class act? Taste and otherness in Le Goût des autres (Agnès Jaoui, 2000). In: Vanderschelden, I; Waldron, D, ed. France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholarly Press, 2007, pp.116-129.
• Leahy S. Casque d'Or (Jacques Becker, 1952). London: I.B. Tauris, 2007.
• Leahy S. Gender Panic: The 'garce' and the 'Good Girl' in Postwar French Cinema. In: Hipkins, D; Plain, G, ed. War-Torn Tales: Literature, Film and Gender in the Aftermath of World War II. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007, pp.105-122.
• Leahy S. Jean Cocteau. Williams, JS. French Studies 2007, 61(3), 398-399.
• Leahy S. Visual and Embodied Pleasures: Cinema-going in Newcastle upon Tyne. In: Fawcett, H, ed. Made in Newcastle: Visual Culture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Northumbria University Press, 2007, pp.87-101.
• Leahy S. Simone Signoret: Aging and agency. Studies in the Literary Imagination 2006, 39(2), 21-42.
• Leahy S. 'Neither charm nor sex appeal...' Just what is the appeal of Simone Signoret?. Studies in French Cinema 2004, 4(1), 29-40.
• Leahy S. The Matter of Myth: Bardot, Stardom and Sex. Studies in French Cinema 2003, 3(2), 71-81.
• Leahy S. Bardot and Dance: Representing the Real?. French Cultural Studies 2002, 13(37), 49-64.
• Leahy S, Hayward S. The Tainted Woman: Simone Signoret, Site of Pathology or Agent of Retribution?. In: Sieglohr, U, ed. Heroines without Heroes: Reconstructing Female and National Identities in European Cinema, 1945-51. London and New York: Cassell, 2000, pp.77-88.
• Leahy S. 'A la place de l'autre …': Otherness, gender and nation in two films by Agnès Jaoui. Studies in French Cinema 2012, 12(3), 215-226.
• Leahy S. La Règle du jeu [The Rules of the game]. Modern and Contemporary France 2012, 20(4), 518-519.
• Leahy S. Les Vacances de Mlle Huguette: Henri Jeanson, collaborateur de Cinémonde. In: Gwénaëlle Le Gras and Geneviève Sellier, ed. Cinémas et Cinéphilies populaires dans la France d'après-guerre, 1945-1958. Paris, France: Nouveau Monde, 2015, pp.53-65.
• Leahy S. Screenwriters in post-war French Cinema: an overview. Studies in French Cinema 2015, 15(1), 11-36.
• Leahy S, Vanderschelden I. Screenwriters in French Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021.
• Leahy S. Le Rouge et le noir, ou la France et l’Italie: stars et co-productions. In: Gwénaëlle Le Gras and Geneviève Sellier, ed. Danielle Darrieux: La Traversée d'un siècle. Presses Universitaires Brodeaux, 2020.
• Leahy S. La Genèse du Diable au corps (1947). Une recette pour un scénario de «qualité»?. In: Boillat A; Philippe G, ed. L'adaptation: des livres aux scénarios. Brussels: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2018, pp.135-163.
• Leahy S. Star dialogue: Henri Jeanson, Louis Jouvet and the mise en scène and mise en corps of film dialogue. In: Abecassis M; Block M; Ledegen G; Peñalver Vicea M, ed. Le Grain de la voix dans le monde anglophone et francophone. Bern: Peter Lang, 2019, pp.73-111.