introduction

I took up the post of Director of the Doctoral College at the University of Wolverhampton in November 2015. I work to provide an outstanding research culture for our PhD, Professional Doctorate and MPhil research students — a culture that supports speedy completion, skills and career development, teaching opportunities and conference presentation experiences, and much more. I see my role as exclusively working for the research student experience, across all disciplines in the University.

I previously worked at the universities of Aberystwyth (1994-2001), York St John (2001-2007) and Salford (2007-2015). At the latter institution I was Director of Postgraduate Research Studies for the College of Arts and Social Sciences.

I completed my MPhil and PhD (supervised by Prof Ioan Williams) at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where I worked closely with John Hefin MBE (former Head of Drama, BBC Wales) and Prof Elan Closs Stephens CBE (former Chair of the S4C Authority) in establishing and running a new degree in Film and Television Studies in 1997.

I also co-founded (and named) the annual Ffresh Film Festival. I was involved in the founding, formation and running of the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership, across seven Higher Education institutions, which was awarded £14million by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2014.

I’ve delivered undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in Critical Theory, post-war British theatre, popular musicology, European avant-gardes and many aspects of film history, along with practical and practice-based teaching in theatre / performance and film. I’ve also been an external examiner for BAs and PhDs and course revalidations, and have peer reviewed for a variety of journals and publishers (including Oxford University Press, Routledge, Bloomsbury, Ashgate, Palgrave, Intellect and Manchester University Press). I’ve presented papers at academic conferences and film festivals in several countries, overseen and curated film retrospectives, and served on the jury of the Leeds International Film Festival. I’ve introduced and talked about the films of Michael Reeves around the world since the publication of my critical biography, Michael Reeves, by Manchester University Press in 2003.

My current research is interdisciplinary, across audio and visual cultures, and with reference to ideology and form, autonomist Marxism, poststructuralism, affect theory, and feminism and spectacle. My next monographs, Hotbeds of  Licentiousness, will be published in 2022 along with two further co-edited collections, on the British “X” rating, and feminism and hip-hop. I was returned to the Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 and the Research Excellence Framework in 2014 and 2020 (for both Salford and Wolverhampton, the latter with five outputs, and was also included in an Impact Case Study).

This website concerns my research activity. Thank you for visiting.

Talking about Terry Richardson, Agency and Crisis conference (University of Wolverhampton 18/10/16)

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This site contains only a selection of my writing, mostly from 2010 onwards, which I’ve grouped thematically.

If you want everything – back to 1998 – please access my academia.edu page: https://wlv.academia.edu/BenjaminHalligan/

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Full publications list:

Monographs:

Michael Reeves, Manchester University Press / British Film Makers series, 2003.

Desires for Reality: Radicalism and Revolution in Western European Film, Berghahn Books, 2016.

Co-edited collections:

Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics, Ashgate, 2010. Co-editor with Michael Goddard.

Reverberations: The Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics of Noise, Continuum, 2012. Co-editor with Michael Goddard and Paul Hegarty.

Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Co-editor with Michael Goddard and Nicola Spelman.

The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop, Routledge, 2013. Co-editor with Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs and Robert Edgar.

The Arena Concert: Music, Media and Mass Entertainment, Bloomsbury, 2015. Co-editor with Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, Robert Edgar and Nicola Spelman.

Stories We Could Tell: Putting Words to American Popular Music, by David Sanjek. Routledge 2018. Co-editor with Mark Duffett and Tom Attah.

Politics of the Many: Contemporary Radical Thoughts and the Crisis of  Agency, Bloomsbury 2021. Co-editor with Rebecca Carson,  Stefano Pippa and Alexei Penzin.

Articles:

“Makavejev and Zhdanovism in Nevinost Bez Zastite” in Slovo: an inter-disciplinary journal of Russian, Eurasian and East European affairs (University of London) 10, 1998.

“An Aesthetic of Chaos: Cinema from the former Yugoslavia, 1995” in Slovo: an inter-disciplinary journal of Russian, Eurasian and East European affairs (University of London) 11, 1999.

“Idylls of Socialism: The Sarajevo Documentary School and the Problem of the Bosnian Subproletariat” in Studies in East European Cinema (Intellect Journals), Autumn 2010.

“Cinema, the Post-Fordist Worker, and Immaterial Labour: From Post-Hollywood to the European Art Film” in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 53:1, Spring 2012. Dossier: “Working Life Now and Then”. Co-written with Michael Goddard.

“‘({})’: Raunch Culture, Third Wave Feminism and The Vagina Monologues” in Theory & Event, 17.1, March 2014.

“Use/Abuse/Everything/Everyone: A Dialogue on LA Plays Itself”, co-written with Laura Wilson, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 56:2, Fall 2015.

“Modeling Affective Labor: On Terry Richardson’s Photography” in Cultural Politics 13:1, March 2017.

“‘This is Father Berrigan Speaking from the Underground’: Daniel Berrigan SJ and the Conception of a Radical Theatre” in TDR: The Drama Review 62:2, Summer 2018.

“Sway of the Sea: Kathryn Bigelow’s Imperial Eco-Eschatology” in New Review of Film and Television Studies, 19:2, 2021.

Chapters:

“The New Mesmerica” in Shocking Cinema of the Seventies, ed. Xavier Mendik, Noir Publications, 2000. 

“What is the Neo-Underground and What Isn’t: A First Consideration of Harmony Korine” in Underground USA: Filmmaking beyond the Hollywood Canon, ed. Xavier Mendik, Steven Schneider, Wallflower Press, 2002.

“The Tasks of the European Underground: Letter to Luis Buňuel” in Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945, eds. Xavier. Mendik and Ernest Mathijs, Wallflower Press, 2004.

“What Was the Neo-Underground and What Wasn’t: A First Reconsideration of Harmony Korine” in New Punk Cinema, ed. Nicholas Rombes, Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

“On Tarkovsky’s Aesthetic Strategies” in Through the Mirror: Reflections on the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, eds. G. A. Jónsson and T. Óttarsson, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007.

“Messing Up the Paintwork” (Introduction), co-written with Michael Goddard, in Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics, eds. Michael Goddard and Benjamin Halligan, Ashgate, 2010.

“Disco Galactica: Futures Past and Present” in Investigating Battlestar Galactica: Flesh, Spirit, and Steel, eds. Roz Kaveney and Jennifer Stoy, I B Tauris, 2010.

“The Autumn in Germany: A Dialogue on Fassbinder and Terrorism”, co-written with Michael Goddard, in Pasolini and Fassbinder: the European Legacy between Utopia and Nihilism, eds. Alexis Nuselovici and Fabio Vighi, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010.

‘“As if from the sky’: Divine and Secular Dramaturgies of Noise” (and co-author of Introduction) in Reverberations: The Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics of Noise, eds Michael Goddard, Benjamin Halligan and Paul Hegarty, Continuum, 2012.

“‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’: Riding on The Medicine Ball Caravan’, co-written with David Sanjek (and co-author of Introduction) in The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop, eds. Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, Robert Edgar, Benjamin Halligan, Routledge, 2013.

“Guest Worker: Dušan Makavejev’s Capitalist Phase” in Mysteries of Makavejev: Eros, Ideology, Montage, eds. Vladimir Erent and Bonita Rhoads, Litteraria Pragensia, 2013/2018.

“Shoegaze as the Third Wave: Affective Psychedelic Noise, 1965-1991” (and co-author of Introduction) in Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music, eds. Michael Goddard, Benjamin Halligan, Nicola Spelman, Bloomsbury/Continuum, 2013.

“From Countercultures to Suburban Cultures: Frank Zappa after 1968” for Countercultures and Popular Music, eds. Sheila Whiteley and Jedediah Sklower, Ashgate, 2014.

“‘My uterus doesn’t expel rape sperm’: SlutWalk and the Activist Legacy of the Suffragettes”, in Suffragette Legacy: How does the History of Feminism Inspire Current Thinking in Manchester, eds. Camilla Mork Rostvik and Ella Louise Sutherland. Cambridge Scholars Press 2015.

“Intimate Live Girls” in The Arena Concert: Music, Media and Mass Entertainment, Bloomsbury, co-eds Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, Robert Edgar, Benjamin Halligan, Nicola Spelman, 2015.

“Illuminating Arenas: Towards the ‘Ultimate Multimedia Experience’”, co-written with Jon Stewart, and co-author of the Introduction, The Arena Concert: Music, Media and Mass Entertainment, Bloomsbury, co-eds Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, Robert Edgar, Benjamin Halligan, Nicola Spelman, 2015.

“’A Music Video is just a Promo for a Song’: Music Video as Documentary” in Populäre Musikkulturen im Film, ed. Carsten Heinze, Laura Niebling; Springer VS, 2016.

“Mind Usurps Program: Virtuality and the ‘New Machine Aesthetic’ of Electronic Dance Musics” in Oxford Handbook of Virtual Music, eds. Sheila Whiteley and Shara Rambarran, Oxford University Press (US), 2016.

“Liquidities for the Essex Man: The Monetarist Eroticism of British Yacht Pop” in Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media, eds. Gina Arnold, Daniel Cookney, Kirsty Fairclough, Michael Goddard, Bloomsbury 2017.

“Tension of Exclusion: On Death Grips and The Californian Ideology” in A Dark California: Essays on Dystopian Depictions in Popular Culture, eds. Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice,‎ Agata Zarzycka; McFarland 2018.

“Memory, Graffitti and The Libertines: A Walk Down ‘Up the Bracket’ Alley” in Music, Memory and Memoir, eds. Robert Edgar, Fraser Mann, Helen Pleasance; Bloomsbury 2019.

“‘What Do I Do Now?’: Encountering Ourselves in Music Memoir”, with Jon Stewart, Louise Wener, in Music, Memory and Memoir, eds. Robert Edgar, Fraser Mann, Helen Pleasance; Bloomsbury 2019.

“World’s End: Punk Films from London and New York, 1977-1984” in The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock, eds. George McKay, Gina Arnold; Oxford University Press 2021 (online), 2022 (hardback).

Conferences convened:

• “New Nightmares”, co-convenor with Andy Willis and others, University of Salford, Manchester Metropolitan University, April 2008
• “Sights and Sounds: Interrogating the Music Documentary”, co-convenor with David Sanjek, University Salford, Summer 2010
• “Bigger than Words, Wider than Pictures: Noise, Affect, Politics”, co-convenor with Michael Goddard, Salford, Summer 2010
• MECCSA 2011 Conference, with MECCSA committee, University of Salford, January 2011.
• “Challenging Media Landscapes”, co-convenor with Seamus Simpson, Erik Knudsen, Michael Goddard, University of Salford, November 2014.
• “Diva: Hip-Hop, Feminism, Fierceness”, University of Wolverhampton, July 2019.

Evening programme of live performance for the “Bigger than Words, Wider than Pictures” conference, with The Telescopes as headline act: