Staff Profile

Michael Starr teaches across a range of modules in both the Film and Screen Studies and English departments, specialising in critical theory, science fiction film and contemporaneous issues surrounding transmedia. He also sup​ervises both undergraduate dissertations and PhD students.

Current and past taught modules include:

• MED1045 Film History
• MED1072 Film Analysis
• MED2078 Researching for the Media
• MED2107 Screen Storytelling
• MED2111 Global Cinemas
• MED2054 Film Theory
• MED2054 Television Drama
• JOU2017 Research Methods
• MED3037 Science Fiction
• MED3008 Horror on Screen
• MED3053 Hollywood and Beyond
• MED3056 Cult Media
• MED4029 Dissertation
• MED4031 Practical Project
• LITM037 Pulp Visions
• LITM033 Critical Theory

PhD Supervision

Michael has supervised and examined many PhD students, on such diverse topics as comic scholarship, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, desert island narratives, cinema and pedagogy, cyborgs and posthumanism, and media representation of UFOs. He would be interested in supervising doctoral work in the areas of:

• Film philosophy
• Science fiction film/TV (particularly Apocalyptic/dystopian fiction)
• Cult TV and Film
• Cinema and posthumanism/cyborg culture
• Deleuze and Guattari
• Seminal SF authors and auteurs (particularly H.G. Wells, Joss Whedon)
• Cinematic Universes and Transmedia
• Contemporary Hollywood film
• Global cinemas and film movements
• Popular culture

Michael’s research primarily concerns: philosophical conceptions of science fiction cinema, television and literature; cult media, transhumanism; global cinemas; transmedia and convergence cultures. He has peer-reviewed research published by leading academic journals and publishers across these fields. Most recently, he has authored Wells Meets Deleuze: The Scientific Romances Reconsidered (McFarland, 2017) and co-edited Re-entering the Dollhouse: Essays on the Joss Whedon Television Series (McFarland, 2021.) He has also published widely on transmedia, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, television horror, time travel narratives, comics, and various Whedonverse texts.

For publications, projects, datasets, research interests and activities, view Mike Starr’s research profile on Pure, the University of Northampton’s Research Explorer.

Monograph

Starr, Michael. Wells Meets Deleuze: The Scientific Romances Reconsidered. McFarland, 2017.

Edited Collections

Starr, Michael, and Heather M. Porter, editors. Re-entering the Dollhouse: Essays on the Joss Whedon Television Series. McFarland, in press; forthcoming 2021.

Starr, Michael, Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett, eds. Horror Studies. Volume 8 Issue 2. Intellect, 2017.

Starr, Michael and Nathan Wiseman-Trowse. Studies in Comics: Alan Moore. 2(1.) London: Intellect, 2011.

Chapters and Journal Articles

Starr, Michael. “’How Does It Feel to End the World?’: Reading Science Fiction via Dark Ecology.” Re-entering the Dollhouse: Essays on the Joss Whedon Television Series, edited by Michael Starr and Heather M. Porter. McFarland, in press; forthcoming 2021.

Starr, Michael. “’You Want to Protect the World, But You Don’t Want it to Change!’:  Apocalyptic Capitalism and ‘Accelerating the Process’ in The Marvel Cinematic Universe.” War in the Whedonverses, edited by Samira Nadkarni. McFarland Publishing, forthcoming 2021.

Starr, Michael. “’To Speak Against an Opponent Eloquently Makes You an Unusual Personage’: Joss Whedon as Deleuzian Minor Writer.” Transmediating the Whedonverse(s): Essays on Text, Paratext,and Metatext, edited by Julie L. Hawk and Juliette C. Kitchens. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 141-166.

Starr, Michael, Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett.  “Bloodlines: hunting the vampire through TV history.” Horror Studies. Volume 8 Issue 2. Intellect, 2017, pp. 175-181.

Starr, Michael, Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett, eds. Horror Studies. Volume 8 Issue 2. Intellect, 2017.

Starr, Michael. “I Flung Myself into Futurity”: H.G. Wells’s Deleuzian Time Machine. Time Travel in the Media, edited by Joan Ormrod and Matthew Jones. McFarland, June 2015.

Starr, Michael. “The lasting allure of the flying saucer” edited by Jon Kelly. BBC News Magazine, 12 June 2014.

Starr, Michael. “I’ve Watched You Build Yourself from Scratch”: The Assemblage of Echo. Confounding Purpose, Confusing Identity: Examinations of Reality and Fantasy in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Sherry Ginn, Alison Buckman and Heather M. Porter, eds. New Jersey; Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Starr, Michael. “Whedon’s Great Glass Elevator: Space, Liminality and Intertext in The Cabin in the Woods.” Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association. 36(10), January 2014.

Editorial Boards and Organisations

Member of editorial board for Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association (WSA)

Member of the American Popular Culture Association (PCA) – Science fiction and Fantasy area

Conference Organisation:

Co-organiser of: The Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses 7. Kingston University, 7-10 July 2016.

Co-organiser of Twenty-First Century TV: Television in the Digital Era. The University of Northampton, May 2015.

Co-organiser of TV Fangdom II: Daughter of Fangdom. The University of Roehampton, June 2015.

Co-organiser of Cult TV: TV Cultures. Series of AHRC sponsored symposiums. The University of Northampton, April 2014.

Co-Organiser of TV Fangdom: A Conference on Television Vampires, The University of Northampton, 7-8th June 2013.

Co-organiser of Magus: Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Work of Alan Moore. The University of Northampton, 28th & 29th May 2010.

Projects:

The Cult TV: TV Cultures Network (2015, AHRC ref: AH/K003844/1): addressing the Digital Transformations of Arts and Humanities, stimulating ongoing collaboration with academic researchers and the wider community, including creative and commercial bodies, in the form of producers, archivers, and consumers of television. The resulting outputs informed policy makers and government agendas, commercial and private sectors, and museums and organisations with a stake in preserving the cultural and national heritage of television.