Inaugural Lecture - Professor Steve Rawle

This event will be in person

Steve tends to focus on works with low cultural esteem. Most recently he’s spent a lot of time researching and writing about giant monsters. Behind this lies a fascination with the maligned, the marginal and things beloved by only a fraction of the public. This is a politics, a global vision and a commitment to think about how lines of connection are drawn by the least likely candidates and the ways these speak to our experiences of the world.

A lot of his publications have the word ‘transnational’ in the title. They evidence both a progressive vision of an interconnected world but also the spectres of long-standing legacies of conflict and colonialism. The least valued artworks can often be the most revealing.

Throughout this lecture, Steve will reflect on a contradictory career. While his research often looks at culturally denigrated (and sometimes downright bad) cinema, he tries to teach students how to make the best films possible. This is a passionate defence of film and media studies, that most culturally reviled ‘Mickey Mouse subject’. Imagine working at the wrong end of quality in the ‘wrong’ end of academia.

Biography:

Steve Rawle is a graduate of York St John, having received a BA in Drama, Film and Television in 1997. Subsequently, he completed a research MLitt in 2000 and received his PhD, on performance in the films of Hal Hartley, from The University of Aberdeen in 2007. He’s got a bit of experience in the TV industry, but it was never really for him. When he began studying for his Masters he always thought he’d go back to making films, but he’s never really had time. In 2007, he came back to YSJ after teaching at Aberdeen for several years.

He’s written three monographs, Transnational Cinema: An Introduction (2018), Performance in the Cinema of Hal Hartley (2011), and Transnational Kaijū: Exploitation, Globalisation and Cult Monster Movies (2022). He’s co-edited or co-written three others. His writing has appeared in Film Criticism, The Journal of Japanese & Korean Cinema, Asian Cinema, East Asian Journal of Popular Culture and The Journal of Fandom Studies. As a co-investigator of the Cinema and Social Justice Filmmaking project, he executive produced the award-winning film Cost of Living (2022). He’s currently trying to fund new filmmaking projects.

A lot of his recent writing is about Godzilla and giant monster movies. He’s recently been working with colleagues around the world to mark and reflect upon the 70th birthday of Japan’s most famous cultural export. This is the kind of thing that meant someone at YSJ nicknamed him ‘Dr Monster’.

Timings and Refreshments

This event will finish at 7.00pm and will be followed by a drinks reception from 7.00pm - 7.45pm for all attending.

Venue: De Grey Lecture Theatre, York St John University, Lord Mayor’s Walk, YO31 7EX.

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