Dr Stuart Joy

In an era of franchise dominance and global streaming platforms, screen media does not simply reflect culture. It actively shapes how trauma, power, and identity are understood. My research examines how film and television construct these experiences through narrative, form, and spectatorship.

Trauma, in this work, is not just thematic. It operates as a formal principle. In The Traumatic Screen: The Films of Christopher Nolan (Intellect, 2020), I argue that trauma structures temporality, point of view, and audience identification. It is embedded in how stories are told, not only in what they depict.

Across contemporary cinema and television — from the films of Christopher Nolan to titles such as Looper, For Your Eyes Only, and Dark — my research shows how fractured, recursive, and unstable temporalities render private psychological experience inseparable from broader cultural anxiety. These texts do not simply represent the persistence of the past. They reproduce it structurally.

My work on gender, power, and spectatorship extends this approach by examining how screen texts position their audiences. Representation is never neutral. It organises identification, complicity, and distance. In "Sexual Violence in Serial Form" (Feminist Media Studies, 2019), I demonstrate how Breaking Bad's moral framework depends on the marginalisation of women. In work on Black Mirror, I analyse how "Shut Up and Dance" engineers forms of viewer complicity that resist ethical disengagement. My research on the James Bond franchise positions it as an ongoing negotiation between entrenched models of masculinity and sustained feminist critique.

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD candidates, collaborators, and media organisations interested in these areas.

Contact Me

I have authored or co-edited seven books, with an eighth forthcoming, alongside chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections. My work spans monograph and edited volume formats, and has been published by Intellect, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Columbia University Press, and Wallflower Press. The full list of publications is available on my CV.

My teaching is grounded in my research: what I'm writing about feeds directly into what I teach. I want the ideas in the seminar room to feel current, contested, and connected to the real world of screen production.

I've been teaching undergraduate film and media for over fifteen years, across modules that range from screen theory and criticism to short film production, global film cultures, and the business of the industry. I've been recognised with the SU Exceptional Teaching Award (2022) and multiple STAR Teaching & Staff Award nominations across seven consecutive years.

I got into teaching because I wanted students to have the experience I had, where a lecturer changed how you saw the world. I'm available, I'm responsive, and I take individual students seriously as people, not just as cohorts. If you are thinking about studying film or television at Solent, feel free to get in touch.

If you'd like the full picture — publications, conference papers, teaching history, and everything in between — my CV has it all.

I give public lectures, conference papers, and invited talks on film, television, trauma, and screen culture — and I'm available for expert commentary for press and broadcast. Whether it's an academic conference, a film festival, or a time-sensitive media enquiry, I'm interested in conversations that take popular culture seriously.

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