Dr Adam O'Brien
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+44 (0) 118 378 4077
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Associate Professor
Co-Director, Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures
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Admissions Lead
Office
205Building location
Minghella StudiosAreas of interest
My research is mainly focused on the relationship between film aesthetics and the material environment. I practice a form of close analysis informed by ecocritical ideas and concerns, such as location, presence, materiality and scale. My first book, Transactions With the World (Berghahn, 2016), is an ecocritical study of New Hollywood film. In 2018 I published Film and the Natural Environment: Elements and Atmospheres (Wallflower/Columbia), an introduction to the study of environmental dynamics and subjects in narrative cinema.
A number of my current and future research projects turn towards the subject of infrastructure, or ‘built ecology,’ in film and beyond. I have acted as a peer reviewer for a range of leading journals and publishers, including Screen, [in]Transition, Movie and Oxford University Press.
Postgraduate supervision
Current and recent PhD supervision has included projects on the following topics:
- Shakespeare adaptations and genre conventions
- editing principles and editing practice
- Suffolk, Yesterday and the human geography of a UK film production
- landscape and British cinema in the 1930s
- tigers in film; an archeological perspective
I would welcome hearing from prospective research students about projects relating to film style and/or the non-human environment.
Teaching
I teach across a range of practical and critical modules, at all levels, including:
- Approaches to Film
- Cities on Screen
- Film Forms and Cultures
- Contemporary Documentary.
Professional bodies/affiliations
- Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC)
- British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) Teaching and Learning Network.
Publications
- O'Brien, A. (2023) Pinning down Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s red balloon. Movie: a journal of film criticism , 11 ISSN: 2047-1661
- O'Brien, A. (2021) Central Park and its provision. Open Screens , 41 (1). ISSN: 2516-2888 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.16995/os.47
- Guan, C. and O'Brien, A. (2020) Natural aesthetics: environments and perspectives in contemporary film theory. Screen , 61 (2). pp. 331-333. ISSN: 1460-2474 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjaa020
- O'Brien, A. (2019) Energy and eventhood: the infrastructural set piece. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture , 11 (1). ISSN: 2000-4214 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2019.1697551
- O'Brien, A. (2018) In and around The Bay: water, fish, infrastructure. Film Studies , 19 (1). pp. 20-33. ISSN: 1469-0314 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7227/FS.19.0003
- O'Brien, A. (2017) Roberto Rossellini presents. In: Gibbs, J. and Pye, D. , (eds.) The Long Take: Critical Approaches. Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television Palgrave Macmillan , London. pp. 117-132. ISBN: 9781137585721
- O'Brien, A. (2017) Film and the natural environment: elements and atmospheres. Short Cuts Wallflower Press , London. pp 114. ISBN: 9780231182652
- O'Brien, A. (2016) Transactions with the world: ecocriticism and the environmental sensibility of new Hollywood. Berghahn Books , Oxford. pp 228. ISBN: 9781785330001
- O'Brien, A. (2015) Brokeback Mountain: a toast. Movie: a journal of film criticism (6). pp. 29-33. ISSN: 2047-1661
- O'Brien, A. (2013) Regarding things in Nashville and the exterminating angel: another path for eco-film criticism. ISLE: Interdisciplinary studies in Literature and Environment , 20 (2). pp. 258-273. ISSN: 1076-0962 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/isle/ist031
- O'Brien, A. (2013) Nonindifferent mountains: ecocriticism, the thin red line and the conditions of film fiction. Film Criticism , 38 (2). pp. 1-19. ISSN: 0163-5069
- O'Brien, A. (2012) When a film remembers its filming: the new Hollywood zoom. Journal of Media Practice , 13 (3). pp. 227-237. ISSN: 2574-1136 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jmpr.13.3.227_1