Dr Kay Dickinson
- Reader (School of Culture & Creative Arts Administration Office)
telephone:
0141 330 2000 ext. 0985
email:
Kay.Dickinson@glasgow.ac.uk
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4257-6214Biography
Prior to my appointment at Glasgow, I held positions at Concordia University, Montreal (2013-2021), Goldsmiths, University of London (2005-2012), King’s College, University of London (2003-2005) and Middlesex University (1997-2003). In the academic year of 2010-11, I was a Fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University and, in 2019, the Distinguished Visiting Professor at MICA (Mudra Institute of Communications) in Ahmedabad, India.
Research interests
My research examines how revolutionary, anti-colonial and popular media from the Arab world functions amidst and in resistance to transnational global capital. I have co-edited anthologies on these topics and published two monographs: Arab Cinema Travels: Transnational Syria, Palestine, Dubai and Beyond (British Film Institute Press, 2016) and Arab Film and Video Manifestos (Palgrave, 2018). Shorter, more recent projects focus on Arab migrants’ contributions to the creative economy in Europe and the Arabian Gulf.
A constant concern for labour practices, histories and rights inflects my work. My first monograph, Off Key: When Film and Music Won’t Work Together (Oxford University Press, 2008), sought to understand the film and music industries’ traditions of production, representation, dissemination and consumption in line with the broader employment landscapes of so-called post-Fordism and the rise of creative economy culture. My most recent, Supply Chain Cinema: Producing Global Film Workers (British Film Institute Press, 2024), continues in this vein through investigations of offshored film production in the UK and the UAE and the educational structures that support it.
I am currently completing a short book entitled Fernando – A Song by Abba for the Duke University Press Singles series. In it, I examine how this particular pop mega-hit expresses sympathies with anti-capitalist, Third World and other liberation struggles whilst remaining an unrepentant commodity, riding new and usually antithetical waves of global trade set in motion during the 1970s.
Publications
2024
Dickinson, K. (2024) Supply Chain Cinema: Producing Global Film Workers. Series: International screen industries. Bloomsbury Publishing/BFI Imprint. ISBN 9781839024627
Dickinson, K. (2024) Import-re-export: Reconsidering the film festival as a port economy. In: Hudson, Dale and Yunis, Alia (eds.) Reorienting the Middle East: Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean Meet. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, Indiana, USA, pp. 207-228. ISBN 9780253067562
2022
Dickinson, K. and Saglier, V. (2022) Funding the ‘Creative Documentary’: An art cinema of refugees. In: Shafik, Viola (ed.) Documentary Filmmaking in the Middle East and North Africa. American University in Cairo Press: Cairo, Egypt, pp. 133-152. ISBN 9789774169588
Dickinson, K. (2022) Gil Z. Hochberg, Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2021, 208 pp. Screen, 63(3), pp. 393-396. (doi: 10.1093/screen/hjac032)[Book Review]
2021
Dickinson, K. (2021) Be wary of anniversaries: inside the archive, out on the street. Film Quarterly, 75(2), pp. 40-48. (doi: 10.1525/fq.2021.75.2.40)
Dickinson, K. (2021) The manifesto of new cinema in Egypt. Black Camera, 13(1), pp. 13-18.
Dickinson, K. (2021) Manifesto of the Palestinian Cinema Group: Beirut, Lebanon, 1972. Black Camera, 13(1), pp. 402-403.
Dickinson, K. (2021) Supply chain cinema, supply chain education: training creative wizardry for offshored exploitation. In: Hockenberry, Matthew, Starosielski, Nicole and Zieger, Susan (eds.) Assembly Codes: the Logistics of Media. Duke University Press: Durham, pp. 171-187. ISBN 9781478009733 (doi: 10.1215/9781478013037-013)
2020
Dickinson, K. (2020) “Make it what you want it to be”: logistics, labor, and land financialization via the globalized free zone studio. In: Jacobson, Brian R. (ed.) In the Studio: Visual Creation and Its Material Environments. University of California Press: Oakland, California, pp. 261-280. ISBN 9780520297593 (doi: 10.2307/j.ctv125jsnh.16)
Della Ratta, D., Dickinson, K. and Haugbolle, S. (Eds.) (2020) The Arab Archive: Mediated Memories and Digital Flows. Series: Theory on demand. Institute of Network Cultures: Amsterdam. ISBN 9789492302564
Dickinson, K. (2020) Manifesto writing as populist praxis (within the university and beyond). Culture Machine, 19,
2019
Dickinson, K. (2019) Re-citation and resuscitation from the archives of Arab revolution. Screen, 60(1), pp. 46-69. (doi: 10.1093/screen/hjy063)
2018
Dickinson, K. (2018) Arab Film and Video Manifestos: Forty-Five Years of the Moving Image Amid Revolution. Series: Palgrave studies in Arab cinema. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham. ISBN 9783319998008 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-99801-5)
Jaikumar, P. and Dickinson, K. (Eds.) (2018) Teaching Film and Media Against the Global Right. Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier. 5(1) [Edited Journal]
2017
Dickinson, K. (2017) “Everyone’s property”: video copying, poetry, and revolution in Arab West Asia. In: Neves, Joshua and Sarkar, Bhaskar (eds.) Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global. Duke University Press: Durham, pp. 307-326. ISBN 9780822368915 (doi: 10.1215/9780822372547-015)
Dickinson, K. (2017) More than just extras: FAMU within Czechoslovak-Syrian relations. In: Stejskalová, Tereza (ed.) Filmmakers of the World, Unite! Forgotten Internationalism, Czechoslovak Film and the Third World. Tranzit.cz: Praha, pp. 85-96. ISBN 9788087259412
2016
Dickinson, K. (2016) Arab Cinema Travels: Transnational Syria, Palestine, Dubai and Beyond. Palgrave; BFI: London. ISBN 9781844577859 (doi: 10.5040/9781838711542)
2015
Dickinson, K. (2015) At what cost “theory”? An economics and poetics of uptake. Framework, 56(2), pp. 433-450. (doi: 10.13110/framework.56.2.0433)
Davis, G., Dickinson, K. , Patti, L. and Villarejo, A. (2015) Film Studies: a Global Introduction. Routledge: New York ; London. ISBN 9780415734349 (doi: 10.4324/9781315754192)
2013
Burkhalter, T., Dickinson, K. and Harbert, B. J. (Eds.) (2013) The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Connecticut. ISBN 9780819573865
2012
Dickinson, K. (2012) Introduction. Cinema Journal, 52(1), pp. 132-136. (doi: 10.1353/cj.2012.0110)
Dickinson, K. (2012) Syrian cinema: out of time? Screening the Past(34),
Dickinson, K. (2012) The state of labor and labor for the state: Syrian and Egyptian cinema beyond the 2011 uprisings. Framework, 53(1), pp. 99-116. (doi: 10.1353/frm.2012.0012)
2010
Dickinson, K. (2010) The Palestinian road (block) movie: everyday geographies of Second Intifada filmmaking. In: Iordanova, Dina, Martin-Jones, David and Vidal, Belén (eds.) Cinema at the Periphery. Wayne State University Press: Detroit, pp. 137-155. ISBN 9780814336946
2008
Dickinson, K. (2008) Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together. Oxford University Press: Oxford. ISBN 9780195326635 (doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326635.001.0001)
2007
Dickinson, K. (2007) Troubling synthesis: the horrific sights and incompatible sounds of video nasties. In: Sconce, Jeffrey (ed.) Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, pp. 167-188. ISBN 9780822339649 (doi: 10.1215/9780822390190-008)
Dickinson, K. (2007) Music video and synaesthetic possibility. In: Beebe, Roger and Middleton, Jason (eds.) Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, pp. 13-29. ISBN 9780822341390 (doi: 10.1215/9780822390206-002)
Dickinson, K. (2007) Changes in direction: Ken Russell and the limits of experimental Television. In: Mulvey, Laura and Sexton, Jamie (eds.) Experimental British Television. Manchester University Press: Manchester ; New York, pp. 70-88. ISBN 9780719075551
Dickinson, K. (2007) Candyfloss. In: Dönmez-Colin, Gönül and Kiarostami, Abbas (eds.) The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East. Wallflower Press: London ; New York, pp. 13-22. ISBN 9781905674114
Dickinson, K. (2007) “I have one daughter and that is Egyptian cinema”: `Azīza Amīr amid the histories and geographies of national allegory. Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 22(1), pp. 137-177. (doi: 10.1215/02705346-2006-023)
2005
Dickinson, K. (2005) Report on the first Ramallah international film festival. Screen, 46(2), pp. 265-274. (doi: 10.1093/screen/46.2.265)
2004
Dickinson, K. (Ed.) (2004) Teen TV: Genre, Consumption, Identity. BFI Publishing: London. ISBN 9780851709994
Dickinson, K. (2004) Pop stars who can't act: the limits of celebrity 'multi-tasking'. MediaActive, 2,
2002
Dickinson, K. (Ed.) (2002) Movie Music, The Film Reader. Series: In Focus: Routledge Film Readers. Routledge: London. ISBN 9780415281607
2001
Dickinson, K. (2001) ‘Believe’? Vocoders, digitalised female identity and camp. Popular Music, 20(3), pp. 333-347. (doi: 10.1017/S0261143001001532)
Articles
Dickinson, K. (2021) Be wary of anniversaries: inside the archive, out on the street. Film Quarterly, 75(2), pp. 40-48. (doi: 10.1525/fq.2021.75.2.40)
Dickinson, K. (2021) The manifesto of new cinema in Egypt. Black Camera, 13(1), pp. 13-18.
Dickinson, K. (2021) Manifesto of the Palestinian Cinema Group: Beirut, Lebanon, 1972. Black Camera, 13(1), pp. 402-403.
Dickinson, K. (2020) Manifesto writing as populist praxis (within the university and beyond). Culture Machine, 19,
Dickinson, K. (2019) Re-citation and resuscitation from the archives of Arab revolution. Screen, 60(1), pp. 46-69. (doi: 10.1093/screen/hjy063)
Dickinson, K. (2015) At what cost “theory”? An economics and poetics of uptake. Framework, 56(2), pp. 433-450. (doi: 10.13110/framework.56.2.0433)
Dickinson, K. (2012) Introduction. Cinema Journal, 52(1), pp. 132-136. (doi: 10.1353/cj.2012.0110)
Dickinson, K. (2012) Syrian cinema: out of time? Screening the Past(34),
Dickinson, K. (2012) The state of labor and labor for the state: Syrian and Egyptian cinema beyond the 2011 uprisings. Framework, 53(1), pp. 99-116. (doi: 10.1353/frm.2012.0012)
Dickinson, K. (2007) “I have one daughter and that is Egyptian cinema”: `Azīza Amīr amid the histories and geographies of national allegory. Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 22(1), pp. 137-177. (doi: 10.1215/02705346-2006-023)
Dickinson, K. (2005) Report on the first Ramallah international film festival. Screen, 46(2), pp. 265-274. (doi: 10.1093/screen/46.2.265)
Dickinson, K. (2004) Pop stars who can't act: the limits of celebrity 'multi-tasking'. MediaActive, 2,
Dickinson, K. (2001) ‘Believe’? Vocoders, digitalised female identity and camp. Popular Music, 20(3), pp. 333-347. (doi: 10.1017/S0261143001001532)
Books
Dickinson, K. (2024) Supply Chain Cinema: Producing Global Film Workers. Series: International screen industries. Bloomsbury Publishing/BFI Imprint. ISBN 9781839024627
Dickinson, K. (2018) Arab Film and Video Manifestos: Forty-Five Years of the Moving Image Amid Revolution. Series: Palgrave studies in Arab cinema. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham. ISBN 9783319998008 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-99801-5)
Dickinson, K. (2016) Arab Cinema Travels: Transnational Syria, Palestine, Dubai and Beyond. Palgrave; BFI: London. ISBN 9781844577859 (doi: 10.5040/9781838711542)
Davis, G., Dickinson, K. , Patti, L. and Villarejo, A. (2015) Film Studies: a Global Introduction. Routledge: New York ; London. ISBN 9780415734349 (doi: 10.4324/9781315754192)
Dickinson, K. (2008) Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together. Oxford University Press: Oxford. ISBN 9780195326635 (doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326635.001.0001)
Book Sections
Dickinson, K. (2024) Import-re-export: Reconsidering the film festival as a port economy. In: Hudson, Dale and Yunis, Alia (eds.) Reorienting the Middle East: Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean Meet. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, Indiana, USA, pp. 207-228. ISBN 9780253067562
Dickinson, K. and Saglier, V. (2022) Funding the ‘Creative Documentary’: An art cinema of refugees. In: Shafik, Viola (ed.) Documentary Filmmaking in the Middle East and North Africa. American University in Cairo Press: Cairo, Egypt, pp. 133-152. ISBN 9789774169588
Dickinson, K. (2021) Supply chain cinema, supply chain education: training creative wizardry for offshored exploitation. In: Hockenberry, Matthew, Starosielski, Nicole and Zieger, Susan (eds.) Assembly Codes: the Logistics of Media. Duke University Press: Durham, pp. 171-187. ISBN 9781478009733 (doi: 10.1215/9781478013037-013)
Dickinson, K. (2020) “Make it what you want it to be”: logistics, labor, and land financialization via the globalized free zone studio. In: Jacobson, Brian R. (ed.) In the Studio: Visual Creation and Its Material Environments. University of California Press: Oakland, California, pp. 261-280. ISBN 9780520297593 (doi: 10.2307/j.ctv125jsnh.16)
Dickinson, K. (2017) “Everyone’s property”: video copying, poetry, and revolution in Arab West Asia. In: Neves, Joshua and Sarkar, Bhaskar (eds.) Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global. Duke University Press: Durham, pp. 307-326. ISBN 9780822368915 (doi: 10.1215/9780822372547-015)
Dickinson, K. (2017) More than just extras: FAMU within Czechoslovak-Syrian relations. In: Stejskalová, Tereza (ed.) Filmmakers of the World, Unite! Forgotten Internationalism, Czechoslovak Film and the Third World. Tranzit.cz: Praha, pp. 85-96. ISBN 9788087259412
Dickinson, K. (2010) The Palestinian road (block) movie: everyday geographies of Second Intifada filmmaking. In: Iordanova, Dina, Martin-Jones, David and Vidal, Belén (eds.) Cinema at the Periphery. Wayne State University Press: Detroit, pp. 137-155. ISBN 9780814336946
Dickinson, K. (2007) Troubling synthesis: the horrific sights and incompatible sounds of video nasties. In: Sconce, Jeffrey (ed.) Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, pp. 167-188. ISBN 9780822339649 (doi: 10.1215/9780822390190-008)
Dickinson, K. (2007) Music video and synaesthetic possibility. In: Beebe, Roger and Middleton, Jason (eds.) Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, pp. 13-29. ISBN 9780822341390 (doi: 10.1215/9780822390206-002)
Dickinson, K. (2007) Changes in direction: Ken Russell and the limits of experimental Television. In: Mulvey, Laura and Sexton, Jamie (eds.) Experimental British Television. Manchester University Press: Manchester ; New York, pp. 70-88. ISBN 9780719075551
Dickinson, K. (2007) Candyfloss. In: Dönmez-Colin, Gönül and Kiarostami, Abbas (eds.) The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East. Wallflower Press: London ; New York, pp. 13-22. ISBN 9781905674114
Book Reviews
Dickinson, K. (2022) Gil Z. Hochberg, Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2021, 208 pp. Screen, 63(3), pp. 393-396. (doi: 10.1093/screen/hjac032)[Book Review]
Dickinson, K. (2009) Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory, Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond, Insights into Syrian Cinema: Essays and Conversations with Contemporary Filmmakers. Screen, 50(3), pp. 351-354. (doi: 10.1093/screen/hjp022)[Book Review]
Edited Books
Della Ratta, D., Dickinson, K. and Haugbolle, S. (Eds.) (2020) The Arab Archive: Mediated Memories and Digital Flows. Series: Theory on demand. Institute of Network Cultures: Amsterdam. ISBN 9789492302564
Burkhalter, T., Dickinson, K. and Harbert, B. J. (Eds.) (2013) The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Connecticut. ISBN 9780819573865
Dickinson, K. (Ed.) (2004) Teen TV: Genre, Consumption, Identity. BFI Publishing: London. ISBN 9780851709994
Dickinson, K. (Ed.) (2002) Movie Music, The Film Reader. Series: In Focus: Routledge Film Readers. Routledge: London. ISBN 9780415281607
Edited Journals
Jaikumar, P. and Dickinson, K. (Eds.) (2018) Teaching Film and Media Against the Global Right. Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier. 5(1) [Edited Journal]
Grants
- 2024-2026: “Stand-Ins and Extras: Precarious Migrant Film Labour”. BA/Leverhulme Small Grants Scheme (Principal Investigator)
- 2016-2021: “Video Cultures of the Arab Uprisings: Archives of Revolution, Revolutionizing the Archive”. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Principal Investigator)
- 2012: “An Active Archive for the Videos of the Arab Revolutions”. Middle East Institute/Brismes Network Award (Network Lead)
- 2012: “Revolutionary Change and Revolutionary Continuity Amidst the Current Arab Uprisings”. Council for British Research in the Levant (Principal Investigator/Senior Residential Research Fellow, Amman, Jordan)
Supervision
I would welcome students whose interests align with my established specialisms, be that media of the Arab world, revolutionary culture, or creative industries and labour. I am particularly interested in supporting projects that seek to prioritize Global Southern and anti-colonial approaches and topics.
- Alashqar, Akram H A
The Soundtrack in Palestinian Films: The Aesthetics and Relevance of Using It - Chiran, Cristina-Gratiela
Cinematic Nation-Building and Recognition: Kosovo and Palestine - Khan, Nomaan
Bollywood's Others: Hindi Cinema, Hindutva & The Othering of the Muslim Subject.
I have nearly twenty years of supervisorial experience across a broad range of subjects that have included: the economies of Palestinian cinema; precarity and racialized artistic labour; famine history and rhetoric; media representations of veiling; resource extraction cinema; and media infrastructure in post-financial crisis Ireland.
Teaching
- Convenor of MA Creative Arts and Industries
- MLitt Advanced Topics in Film Studies
- MA Introduction to Creative Industries
Additional information
- Editorial board member for the following academic journals: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (formerly Cinema Journal), New Formations, The Soundtrack, World Picture, Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media, Velvet Light Trap (until May 2017) and Sound, Music and the Moving Image (until January 2019)
- Editorial board member for the following book series: The Cultural Histories of Cinema (British Film Institute Press), Cinema Cultures in Contact (University of California Press), Cinema and Media Cultures in the Middle East (Peter Lang Publishing), Moving Image (Legenda)
- Contributor to the following film festivals and series in various capacities: Ramallah International Film Festival; Shashat Women’s Film Festival, Palestine; Regards palestiniens and syriens, Montreal, Présence Autochtone Festival, Montreal
- Advisory board member of ArteEast, Middle East Arts Platform, New York
- Adjudication committee member for: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant (Communications, Media Studies, Gender Studies, Library and Information Sciences), Society for Cinema and Media Studies Student Writing Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Middle East Caucus Student Writing Award
