Dr. Lorrie Palmer

Biography

After an earlier incarnation as a singer-songwriter-musician in London (ah, the ‘80s), I am pleased to have found a home in the Department of Electronic Media and Film since 2015. I explore film genre (horror, noir, sci-fi, action), film history, race, gender, and technology in film and television, digital aesthetics, and cinematic urban architecture in teaching, conference presentations, research and publishing. My fifteen seconds of fame occurred when I played a pivotal role – “Third-Class Survivor” – in Titanic (1997), now archived in the wilds of YouTube as “Deleted Scene #29.” I hope this isn’t a metaphor. 

Teaching

• Film History
• Genre Theory and Criticism: Horror Cinema
• City Cinema: Film Noir, Romance, and Action in the Urban Environment
• Intro to EMF: Media, Culture, and Convergence
• Special Topics: History of Action Cinema; Contemporary Non-Fiction Cinema: Cultural & Social Impacts; Body Image through History; Principles of Film and Media Production

Publications

Book

Home Screens: Public Housing in Global Film and Television, Editor and Author (“Introduction: Public Housing in Global Film and Television” and “Ch. 1, Uncanny Architecture: Haunted Structures in Candyman and The Pruitt-Igoe Myth”), London: Bloomsbury Academic (Nov. 2023).

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• “Untethered Technology in Gravity: Gender and Spaceflight from Science Fact to Fiction,” Science Fiction Film and Television, Special Issue: “When the Astronaut is a Woman: Beyond the Frontier in Film and Television,” co-edited with Dr. Lisa Purse, University of Reading, UK (2019).
• “Homefires Burning: Domestic Space in the Noir City of Angel,” Slayage (2019). (PDF)
• “Blood in the Corridor: The Digital Mastery of Hero-Run Shootouts in Kick-Ass and Wanted,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, co-authored with Dr. Stuart Bender, Curtin University, Australia (2017).
• “Marvel Noir: Agent Carter, The Automat, and Urban Wholeness,” Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture (2017).
• “Resisting the Grid: A Centrifugal Dance in Marvel’s Relocated City,” Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture (2017).
• “Attack the Block: Monsters, Race, and Rewriting South London’s Outer Spaces,” Jump Cut (2014).
• “Cranked Masculinity: Hypermediation in Digital Action Cinema,” Cinema Journal (2012).
• “Black Man/White Machine: Will Smith Crosses Over,” The Velvet Light Trap (2011).
• “B(ew)itchin’ the Kitchen: Funny, Feminine, Femminista,” PopMatters (2011).
• “Between a Rock and a Soft Place: Queering/Queered Heterosexuality in ‘Career Girl’ Films of the 1950s and ‘60s,” Bright Lights Film Journal (2010).
• “Ruby Red and Emerald Green: The Queer Demon Diva of My Dreams,” Camera Obscura (2008).
•  “The Many Faces of Disinclination: Australian Feminist/Post-Colonialist Reflections in Flirting,” Senses of Cinema (2007).
• “With All Due Retrospect: The Essential Harold Lloyd,” Film & History (2005).

BOOK CHAPTERS

• “Market Forces: James Bond, Women of Color, and the Eastern Bazaar,” in The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007, Amsterdam University Press (2020).
• “A Digital Nature: Lucy Takes Technology for a Ride,” in A Companion to the Action Film, Wiley-Blackwell (2019).
• “Female Leadership, Sacrifice, and Technological Mastery on Star Trek: Voyager,” in To Boldly Go: Essays on Gender and Identity in the Star Trek Universe, McFarland & Co. (2017).
• “The Road to Lordsburg: Rural Masculinity in Supernatural,” in TV Goes to Hell: An Unofficial Roadmap of Supernatural, ECW Press (2011).
• “She’s Just a Girl: A Cyborg Passes in The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” in Across the Screens: Science Fiction Film, Television, and Adaptations, Routledge (2011).
• “‘Le Western Noir’: The Punisher as Revisionist Superhero Western,” in The Amazing Transforming Superhero! Essays on the Revision of Characters in Comic Books, Film and Television, Routledge & Co. (2007).