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Hannah Hamad BA (Hons), MA, PhD

Dr Hannah Hamad

(she/her)

BA (Hons), MA, PhD

Reader in Media and Communication

School of Journalism, Media and Culture

Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

Hannah joined Cardiff University's School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies as a senior lecturer in Media and Communication in September 2017.

She researches, teaches and supervises principally in the area of feminist media studies and the cultural politics of identity in popular media cultures.

Publication

2024

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2019

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2016

2015

2014

2013

2011

2010

2009

2007

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Research

Hannah’s research is principally in the area of feminist media studies, the cultural politics of contemporary popular media (focussing in particular on feminist and postfeminist cultures of popular film and television) and feminist media history.

She has related interests in cultures of stardom and celebrity, especially from the perspective of gender, race and ethnicity, and media representations of NHS workers (especially women, and women of colour).

Current research projects include:

- Media, culture and misogyny in the Yorkshire Ripper years - this project investigates UK media cultures of misogyny in the 1970s and 1980s, arguing that the media discourse surrounding the ongoing 'Yorkshire Ripper' murders is a key context in relation to which both feminist activism and cultural misogyny of the period must be understood. The project encompasses the forthcoming book (in progress) Film, Feminism and Rape Culture in the Yorkshire Ripper Years.

- Mary Stott, 'Women in Media' and the emergence of UK feminist media studies - this project interrogates the relationship between women working the UK media industries, feminist activism in the 1970s and 1980s and the emergence of feminist media studies within UK higher education, focussing on the roles played by lynchpin figure and (former Guardian women's page editor) Mary Stott, and the activist pressure group 'Women in Media'.

Teaching

Hannah's teaches broadly in the field of feminist media studies, and within that, principally in the areas of film and television. She also contributes to JOMEC's teaching of research methods, principally in the area of textual analysis.

Biography

Teaching Overview

Prior to joining Cardiff University in 2017, Hannah taught media studies at the University of East Anglia, film and media studies at King's College London, and media studies at Massey University in New Zealand. Before becoming a university lecturer she taught film and media studies in the FE section at City College Norwich, and Long Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge.

Hannah has guest lectured on gender and celebrity for the Feminist Media and Cultural Studies summer school at Lancaster University, and the MA in Global Media and Communication at the University of Warwick. She has acted as external examiner for undergraduate programmes at Royal Holloway University of London, international foundation programmes at Queen Mary University of London and taught postgraduate programmes at the London School of Economics and Political Science and University College Dublin, and currently the University of Leicester and Lancaster University.

Research Overview

Hannah’s first major research project was on the postfeminist representation of fatherhood in contemporary US film, television and media. It originated from her doctoral studies in this area at the University of East Anglia from 2004-2008, where she worked under the supervision of Professor Diane Negra, now Professor of Film and Screen Cultures at University College Dublin.

This project made a significant contribution to scholarly theorisations of postfeminist masculinities, and it resulted in the publication of the first book-length study to deal primarily with postfeminist masculinity as a cultural identity formation, and the first to explore the relationship between fatherhood and postfeminist discourse in popular cinema.

The book interrogates representations of fatherhood across the spectrum of popular US film of the early twenty-first century. It situates them in relation to postfeminist discourse, identifying and discussing dominant paradigms and tropes that emerge from the tendency of popular cinema to configure ideal masculinity in paternal terms. It analyses postfeminist fatherhood across a range of genres including historical epics, war films, westerns, ‘bromantic’ comedies, male melodramas, action films, family comedies, and others. It also explores recurring themes and intersections such as the rejuvenation of aging masculinities through fatherhood, the paternalised recuperation of immature adult masculinities, the relationship between fatherhood in film and 9/11 culture, post-racial discourse in representations of fatherhood, and historically located formations of fatherhood.

It is now widely cited in new scholarship to emerge in the growing field of studies of contemporary mediated masculinities. Reviews have described it as making “a key contribution to contemporary film and media studies, as well as contemporary gender studies” (Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), and as “an important study bringing together a pair of too often neglected subjects, popular contemporary movies outside the critical canon and the representation of masculinity in those movies” (Mike Chopra-Gant, London Metropolitan University).

Hannah’s work on mediated fatherhood extends to publications in journals like Celebrity Studies and edited collections like Joel Gwynne and Nadine Muller’s Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Although her research interests have expanded, she still speaks and writes on this area on occasion.

Hannah has also published widely in the fields of celebrity studies, recessionary media culture, gender and reality television, postfeminist cultures of popular film and television, and the NHS and the media.

News articles:

Videos:

  • Hannah is interviewed about gender and sexuality in the James Bond films in Stuart Arnott’s video essay ‘The Unloveable James Bond’, produced for the BFI Love season in 2015. https://youtu.be/v4qpGpHEKEE
  • Hannah's research seminar' Eddie Murphy's Baby Mama Drama and Smith Family Values: The (Post) Racial Familial Politics of Hollywood Celebrity Couples' at the University of Winchester, 9th March 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRmUlkRWcQM

Events:

LSE Commission on Gender, Inequality and Power

Hannah gave evidence to the Media and Culture evidence gathering session of the LSE Commission on Gender, Inequality and Power in April 2015. http://www.lse.ac.uk/genderInstitute/research/commission/mediaSession.aspx

Her evidence was used in the Commission’s subsequent report, which published its findings. http://www.lse.ac.uk/genderInstitute/pdf/Confronting-Inequality.pdf

She then responded to the Commission’s 2015 findings and recommendations at the LSE event ‘Confronting Gender Inequality in Uncertain Times’ in January 2017 which reviewed them in light of social, political and economic change since that time, and ahead of publication of an update to the report. http://www.lse.ac.uk/genderInstitute/events/eventsProfiles/201617/Confronting-Gender-Inequality-in-Uncertain-Times.aspx

BFI, Stanley Kubrick 

Hannah took part in the event 'Kubrick on Masculinity' at BFI Southbank as part of the British Film Institute's two month season on the work of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, delivering her talk 'Toxic Masculinity in The Shining' in May 2019.

BFI, The Hot Take: Masculinity at the Movies

Hannah contributed to the first of the BFI's 'hot take' format of discussion events with her talk 'Fathers in Film' as a contribution to the event 'Masculinity at the Movies' in April 2018.

Men, Women and Scorsese

Hannah was part of an panel of speakers at a British Film Institute discussion event on gender in the films of Martin Scorsese at BFI Southbank in February 2017.

BFI Black Star

Hannah participated in the event ‘On Blackness, Cinema and the Moving Image: a KCL Symposium’, which was organised between the Department of Film Studies at King’s College London and the British Film Institute as part of the BFI Black Star season in November 2016, by delivering her talk ‘The Cultural Politics of Black Stars in 10 Iconic Images’ The event is reviewed here by Bex Shorunke (with photography by Runyarao Mapfumo) in gal-dem magazine: http://www.gal-dem.com/blackness-cinema-moving-image-kings-college-london-symposium/

She later participated in the comedian themed entry in the Black Star Stories series of library talks at the BFI Reuben Library in December 2016, where she delivered a talk on Eddie Murphy and Will Smith.

BFI Love

Hannah contributed to the event ‘The Feminist Guide To Love: The Whitewash of Romance’, co-organised between The Bechdel Test Fest and the British Film Institute, in November 2015. She delivered a ‘lightning talk’ that presented an academic perspective on the topic:
http://bechdeltestfest.com/2016/the-feminists-guide-to-love-the-whitewash-of-romance/

She later participated in the BFI Love study day ‘Approaches to Rom Com’ also in November 2015.

Honours and awards

  • King's College London Teaching Excellence Award (nominated 2014)
  • Massey University Women's Award (awarded 2012)

Academic positions

  • 2017 - present: Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication, Cardiff University, UK
  • 2015-2017: Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, University of East Anglia, UK
  • 2013-2015: Lecturer in Film Studies, King's College London, UK
  • 2009-2012: Lecturer in Media Studies, Massey University, New Zealand

Committees and reviewing

  • Forum section editor, Celebrity Studies journal, 2014-2017
  • Editorial advisory board member, Soundings Journal of Politics and Culture, 2017-
  • Editorial board member, Australian Feminist Studies, 2018-
  • Editorial board member, Television & New Media, 2014-
  • Peer reviewer for European Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Review, Journal of Gender Studies, Television & New Media, Critical Studies in Television, Celebrity Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Frontiers, International Journal of English Studies Screening the Past [journals]; and Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Bloomsbury Academic, State University of fNew York Press, New York University Press, Peter Lang and Continuum [book publishers].

Supervisions

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of:

  • Feminist Media Studies
  • intersectional identity formations in popular media
  • Celebrity Culture
  • the cultural politics of contemporary Hollywood
  • UK feminist media histories

Current supervision

Violet Olivia Thompson

Violet Olivia Thompson

Graduate Tutor

Contact Details

Email HamadH2@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone +44 29225 10781
Campuses Two Central Square, Room 2.53, Central Square, Cardiff, CF10 1FS