We use cookies on this site to enhance your experience.
By selecting “Accept” and continuing to use this website, you consent to the use of cookies.
I received my PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto in 1999 and my MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto in 1991. Prior to joining Laurier in 2005, I was assistant professor in the Department of English at U of T Scarborough (1999-2002), and an assistant professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University (2002-2005).
The main focus of my research for the past few years has been the representation of memory in literary and cinematic narrative, and cultural memory more broadly. Since publishing a monograph on memory in/and film in 2010, I have moved into adaptation and transmedia studies, combining my interests in both film and literary studies with what I see as the need to defend critical theory’s reputation in the face of current anti-theoretical tendencies from both ends of the ideological spectrum. Lately I have been exploring the diverse field of critical posthumanism, one area in which theory is alive and well and re-asserting its relevance and centrality to academic work. The critical posthumanist approach, inflected by an attention to the post-secular nature of much contemporary culture, allows for productive critiques of heretofore influential theories of affect, the new materialism (so-called), OOO, and the fate of the image in a post-cinematic moment as it intersects with—or determines—contemporary notions of subjectivity. My current research project, therefore, is on posthuman memory. But memory, arguably, has always been posthuman.
I am willing to supervise graduate students in the areas of film theory, memory studies, critical posthumanism, the postsecular in film, adaptation, transmediality, and film and literature comparative studies more generally.
Books
- Kilbourn, Russell. The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino: Commitment to Style. New York, NY: Wallflower/Columbia University Press, 2020.
- Kilbourn, Russell J. A. and Eleanor Ty, ed. The Memory Effect: The Remediation of Memory in Literature and Film (WLU Press, 2013).
- Kilbourn, Russell J. A. Cinema, Memory, Modernity: The Representation of Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema. (Routledge, 2010).
Articles/Chapters
- Kilbourn, Russell J. A. “When I swallow his heart and lungs, Jesus is pleased”: The Transmediation of Sacrifice in The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.” Special issue of Angelaki - The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. (In press).
- Kilbourn, Russell J. A. “(No) Voice Out of the Whirlwind: The Book of Job and the End of the World in The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, and A Serious Man.” Adaptation 7.1 (2014).
- Kilbourn, Russell J. A. “‘The Obligations of Memory’: Godard’s Underworld Journeys.” The Legacies of Jean-Luc Godard. Christina Stojanova, Douglas Morrey, ed. (WLU Press, 2014).
- Kilbourn, Russell J. A. “Camera Arriving at the Station: Cinematic Memory as Cultural Memory.” Special issue of Societies 3.3 (2013).
Online Articles/Entries
- “Memory and Film”. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory. Warren Buckland and Edward Branigan, ed. (Routledge, 2013).
- “Memory and the Flashback in Film”. Oxford Bibliographies Online: Cinema and Media Studies. Krin Gabbard, ed. (Oxford UP, 2013).
Contact Info:
Office location: DAWB 3-155
Office hours: By appointment.
Languages spoken: English, Italian, German
Personal website: rjakilbourn.