School of Creative Arts, Film and Media (SCAFM)

I joined Portsmouth in 1968 as a lecturer in literature and gained my chair in Film History in 2003. Whether working in literature or film, my research interests have mainly centred around those aspects of British culture which are marginal, popular and without status. The vitality and longevity of popular forms interests me a great deal, and I want to think about the relative length of their discursive roots in order to establish their role in the culture as a whole. Much of my work has been based on archival research, as I think that is a better way to account for the production and consumption of cultural texts rather than relying on some rigid theoretical explanation. But I also think that the film researcher should pay special attention to matters of visual style, and attempt to account for the changing “look” of films in relation to other media in specific periods.

My research projects completed so far have been analyses of the social function of the British “costume” film, the role of women in front of and behind the camera, 1950s British cinema, film taste in Portsmouth in the 1930s and 1940s, and 1970s British cinema. I headed up a major grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the latter, which was completed in September 2009. I have supervised 11 PhD projects to completion.
In order to test out my ideas in the world beyond the University, I have given lectures recently at Tate Britain, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and have been lecturing for an on-line podcast company called YourProf. I have appeared on radio and television quite a few times, most recently on Supersizing the 1970s, which was about food and drink in that decade. Somehow I managed to get very drunk on blue cocktails, in front of rather a large audience.

Current Research^{[Back to top]}

My future research will be towards a speculative book on the relationship between film and cultural history, and will be entitled Beyond the Archive. I will also be continuing my work on Portsmouth film-going and cultural taste, and supervising ongoing PhD projects.

Books^{[Back to top]}

Harper, S. (In preparation). Beyond the Archive.

Publications^{[Back to top]}

Publications since 2008 [IR]

Books^{[Back to top]}

Harper, S. & Porter, V. (2003). British cinema of the 1950s: the decline of deference.Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198159353.

Harper, S. (2000). Women in British cinema: mad, bad and dangerous to know. London: Continuum. ISBN 978-0826447333.

Harper, S. (1994). Picturing the past: the rise and fall of the British costume film. London: BFI. ISBN 978-0851704494.

Co-edited Books^{[Back to top]}

Harper, S. & Smith, J. (Forthcoming). British film culture in the 1970s: the boundaries of pleasure. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Chapman, J., Glancy, M. & Harper, S. (Eds.) (2007). The new film history. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0230001695.

Articles^{[Back to top]}

Harper, S. (In press). Curls and culture: hairstyle in British cinema. Textile: the journal of cloth and culture, 9.

Harper, S. (2006). Fragmentation and crisis: 1940s admissions figures at the Regent cinema, Portsmouth, UK. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 26(3). 361-394.

Harper, S. & Porter, V. (2005). Beyond media history: the challenge of visual style. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 2(1). 1-117.

Harper, S. (2004). A lower middle-class taste community in the 1930s: admissions figures at the Regent, Portsmouth, UK. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 24(4). 565-588.

Book Chapters^{[Back to top]}

Harper, S. (2007). History and representation: the case of 1970s British cinema. In J. Chapman, M. Glancy & S. Harper (Eds.), The new film history (pp. 27-40). Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Professional Memberships^{[Back to top]}

I have previously served as a member of the British Academy Research Board and the AHRC Peer Review College.