Centre for European and International Studies Research

Profile

Sue Harper is Professor of Film History in the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media, and Chair of the Film and Media Research Group in CEISR. She has written extensively on British cinema, and is interested in issues of methodology and periodisation.  She has served on the British Academy Research Board and is on the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Board. She has been invited to lecture at the National Gallery and Tate Britain, and has appeared many times on radio and television. She has recently been invited to be on the Steering Committee of the AHRC-financed Research Network, Filming and Performing  Renaissance History.

Sue has supervised eight doctoral students to completion. She currently has six PhD students.  She is the Principal  Investigator of a major research project on British Cinema in the 1970s, which is wholly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Sue orchestrated the signature of the Partnership between the University of Portsmouth and the British Universities Film and Video Council. This partnership, the first to be signed between the BUFVC and any university, provides the framework for joint research work and grant applications.

Research Clusters

• Film and Media
• Memory Cultures

Discipline Areas

• Cultural Studies
• Film Studies

Publications after 1994

Books

• The New Film History: Sources. Methods, Approaches, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 (co-edited with James Chapman and Mark Glancy)
• British Cinema of the 1950s: the Decline of Deference (Oxford University Press, 2003) (with Vincent Porter). 409pp, ISBN 0-19-815-934-X 
• Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: Women in British Cinema, Continuum, 2000.
• Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of the British Costume Film , British Film Institute 1994.

Occasional Papers

• Weeping in the Cinema in 1950; a Reassessment of Mass-Observation Material, Mass-Observation Archive, Occasional Paper 3, 1995 (with Vincent Porter).

Articles in Books

• 'History and Representation: the case of 1970s British Cinema' in J. Chapman, M.Glancy and S. Harper (eds) The New Film History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. pp27-40, ISBN 0-230-00169-6
• 'Wholesome Sensible Girls and Difficult Dowagers: Women in 1930s British Cinema' in A. Higson and J Ashby (eds), British Cinema Past and Present , Routledge 2000.
• 'The Scent of Distant Blood: Hammer Films and History' in A. Barta (ed), Screening the Past, Greenwood Press, 1998.
• 'Thinking Forward and Up: the British Films of Conrad Veidt', in J. Richards (ed), The Hidden 1930s, Tauris, 1998.
• 'Popular Film, Popular Memory: the Case of World War II', in K Lunn (ed), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century, Berg, 1997.
• '"Nothing to Beat the Hay Diet": Comedy at Gaumont-British and Gainsborough', in P. Cook (ed), Gainsborough Studios, Cassell, 1997.
• 'Bonnie Prince Charlie Revisited: British Costume Films in the 1950s' , in R. Murphy, (ed), British Cinema Book, British Film Institute, 1997.
• 'From Holiday Camp to High Camp: Women in British Feature Film 1945-50', in A Higson (ed), Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema, Cassell, 1996.
• 'The Years of Total War: Propaganda and Entertainment', in C Gledhill (ed) Nationalising Femininity: Women and World War II, Manchester University Press, 1996.

Refereed Articles

• 'Fragmentation and Crisis: 1940's Admissions Figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, August 2006, 26, 3.pp361-394, ISSN 0143-9685, DOI 10.1080/01439680600799389 
• 'Beyond Media History: the Challenge of Visual Style', Journal of British Cinema and Television,  2, 4, 2005 (with Vincent Porter)
• 'A Lower-Middle-Class Taste Community in the 1930s: Admission Figures at the Regent, Portsmouth', The Historical Journal of Film , Radio and Television, October 2004, 24, 4, pp565-588, ISSN 0143-9685, DOI 10.1080/0143968042000293874 
• 'Cinema Audience Tastes in 1950s Britain', Journal of Popular British Cinema , January 1999 (with Vincent Porter).
• 'Throbbing Hearts and Smart Repartee: The Reception of American Films in 1950s Britain', Media History December 1998 (with Vincent Porter).
• 'Moved to Tears: Weeping in the Cinema in Post-War Britain', Screen Summer 1996 (with Vincent Porter).
• 'Madonna of the Seven Moons: Text and Context', History Today , August 1995.

Awards

• Sue was the successful lead applicant for an AHRC research project entitled "1970s British cinema, film and video art: mainstream and counter-culture". This grant was c£162,000, to cover two PhDs, research costs, administrative support, and a seminar series.