Screen and Cultural Studies

Research interests

Hollywood film history, film special effects and pre-cinematic effects traditions; genre studies; intersections between media technologies and their histories; conglomeration and the entertainment industry; games studies; science fiction and horror films and television; robots and AI technologies; cross media intersections between comic books, computer games, films, televisions and theme parks; apocalyptic and millennialist narratives revisited in science fiction; and superhero narratives.

Qualifications

PhD, BA Hons, B Litt.Hons, Dip.Ed. (UniMelb), Dip. Hum. (La Trobe), Grad. Dip. (AFTRS).

Biography

Angela Ndalianis is Associate Professor in Cinema and Cultural Studies. She specialises in Hollywood cinema, digital media and the convergence of popular forms such as films, computer games, comic books and theme park spaces. Her research also explores transdisciplinary and transhistorical approaches to entertainment forms and their history, and she is especially interested in the baroque dimensions of contemporary culture. She both teaches and publishes in these areas.She is Associate Editor of the international refereed journal Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal and Editor of the online journal Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media. Angela is also on the Trustee Board of the National Gallery of Victoria and on the Board of Directors for the Institute for Comics Studies, U.S.A.

Current research

Spectopolis: Theme Park Cultures

This book, which was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, explores the history, influence and cultural significance of the theme park. Past influences such as artistocratic gardens and theatrical extravaganzas, world expositions, amusement parks, picture palaces are explored; and the influence of theme parks like Disneyland of the contemporary urbanscape and new entertainment destinations are also a key component of this research. 

Children of Frankenstein: Science Fiction, Automata and the Emergence of Robot Realities

This research project has been funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant (2009-11). It evaluates the extent to which the gap is closing between science fiction and scientific reality, and it explores how the entertainment industry is playing a crucial role in realising the presence of robots and artificial life forms in our social spaces (in film and computer effects and 'entertainment' robots). Angela is pictured with her robot 'pleo' dinosaur Gertie on the right.

Curatorial Culture

This is a collaborative book project with Professor Jim Collins from the University of Notre Dame, U.S.A. The project investigates the impact that digital technologies have on the collecting and exhibition of culture, and evaluates how new delivery systems are redefining the how concept of the "display" of images at art museums has transformed at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The book explores how the accessibility and portability of digital information has given rise to a curatorial culture in which seemingly everyone can assemble their own music, film, television, and art libraries. The influence that entertainment culture and its love of spectacle has on had museum architecture is also integral to this project.

The Hispanic Baroque: Complexity in the First Atlantic Culture

is a collaborative research project that is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2008-12: $2.5 million). The project leader is Professor Juan Luis Suárez (The University of Western Ontario) and a team of international baroque scholars have been brought together to explore the impact of the European baroque on the North and South Americas. Angela's contribution consists of her expertise on the neo-baroque and contemporary culture, which is a significant part of this project. The outcomes include conferences, journal publications, book publications, and exhibitions. Further information about the entire project is available at http://www.transatlantic.uwo.ca/baroque.html and on the neo-baroque component: http://neobaroque.wordpress.com/

Knowledge transfer

• Trustee, National Gallery of Victoria, Board of Trustees. Committee obligations include: Trustee Board; Collections Management Committee; Exhibitions Committee (Chair); Victorian Foundation of Living Artists; Publications Committee.
• Associate Editor,Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal
• Editor, Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media
• Editorial Board, Cultographies. Wallflower Press: Book Series.

• Editorial Board, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (2009-current).
• Editorial Board, Series/Season/Show: an Online Journal about Television Texts. (2010-current)

• Editorial Board, Intensities: the Journal of Cult Media. (2006-current).
• Editorial Board, Mediekultur. (2006-current).
• Advisor, Ground floor redevelopment, Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
• Board of Directors, Institute for Comics Studies, Missouri.
• Fellow, Futures of Entertainment Network, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCLA, USC
  

Publications

Books

• Science Fiction Experiences, Washington, New Academia Publishing. 2010.
  
• Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses, Jeffereson, McFarland Publishing (In press,  March 2012).
  
• The Comic Book Superhero, ed.Angela Ndalianis, New York and London, Routledge, 2009.
• Super/Heroes: from Hercules to Superman, ed.s Wendy Haslem, Angela Ndalianis, & Chris Mackie, Washington, New Academia Publishing, 2007.
• Angela Ndalianis, Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2004. 
• Stars in Our Eyes: the Star Phenomenon in the Contemporary Era, ed.s Angela Ndalianis and Charlotte Henry, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002.

Chapters in Books (selected)

•  "New Horror and the Return of the Apocalypse", in Popping Culture, ed.s Murray Pomerance and John Sakeris, New York, Pearson Education, 2010, pp.273-84.
  
• "Dark Rides, Hybrid Machines and the Horror Experience", Horror Zone: the Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, ed. Ian Conrich, London, I.B.Tauris, 2010, ch.1.
  
• "Stargate SG-1", The Essential Cult TV Reader, ed. David Lavery, University Press of Kentucky, Kentucky, 2010, pp.237-42.
  
• "The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero", The Comic Book Superhero, ed. Angela Ndalianis, New York and London, Routledge, 2009, ch.1.
•  "Enter the Aleph: Superhero Worlds and Hypertime Realities", The Comic Book Superhero, ed. Angela Ndalianis, New York and London, Routledge, 2009, ch.15.
• "Chasing the White Rabbit to Find a White Polar Bear: Lost in Television", ReadingLost: Perspectives On A Hit Television Show, ed. Roberta Pearson, I.B.Tauris, London. 2009, pp.193-310.
• "Architektur und Rhetorische Inszenierung", in Design als Rhetorik, ed.s Gesche Joost and Arne Scheuermann, Basel,  Birkhäuser Verlag, 2008, pp.191-203.
• "Foreword", Baroque Tendencies in Contemporary Art, Ed. Kelly Wacker, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge, 2008.
• "Do we Need another Hero?" Super/Heroes: from Hercules to Superman, ed.s Wendy Haslem, Angela Ndalianis, & Chris Mackie, Washington, New Academia Publishing, 2007.
•  "Art Cinema" in The Cinema Book, ed. Pam Cook, British Film Institute, London, 2007.
• "Tomorrow's World that We Shall Build Today" in Screen Consciousness: Technology, Cinema, Mind and World. ed.s Robert Pepperell and Michael Punt, Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York. 2006.
• "Le Baroque 'rechargé': Effets spéciaux et seductions Technologiques" in De Tron à Matrix: Réflexions sur un cinema d'un Genre Nouveau. ed. Ludovic Graillat, CRDP de Midi-Pyrénées: Toulouse,  2006, pp.103-122.
• "Estética Neobarroca y entretenimiento contempor à neo" in Barrocos y Neobarrocos: El Infierno de Lo Bello, ed. F. Javier Panera Cuevas, Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura: Salamanca, 2005, pp.337-365. 
•  "Television and the Neo-Baroque", in The Contemporary Television Serial, ed.s Lucy Mazdon and Michael Hammond, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 2005, pp.83-101.
• "The Rules of the Game: Evil Dead II ...Meet thy Doom", Hop on Pop: the Politics and Pleasures of Popular Cultures, ed.s Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, Jane Shattuc, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003, pp.503-516.  
• "Architectures of the Senses: Neo-Baroque Entertainment Spectacles", Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics Of Transition ed.s David Thorburn & Henry Jenkins, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 2003, pp.355-73.
• "Caravaggio Reloaded: Neo-Baroque Poetics", Caravaggio: Darkness & Light, Exhibition Catalogue, Art Gallery of NSW/National Gallery of Victoria, 2003, pp.72-77.
• "Introduction: Stars in Our Eyes" & "Digital Stars in Our Eyes",  Stars in Our Eyes: The Star Phenomenon in the Contemporary Era, (ed.s Angela Ndalianis and Charlotte Henry), Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, pp. vii-xvii & pp. 165-178. 
• "Special Effects, Morphing Magic, and the 90s Cinema of Attractions", in Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick Change, ed. Vivian Sobchack, Minnesota University Press: Minneapolis, 2000, ch.12, pp.251-71.
• "Evil Will Walk Once More": Phantasmagoria ~ the Stalker Film as Interactive Movie? in On a Silver Platter: CD-Roms and the Promises of a New Technology, ed. Greg Smith, New York, New York University Press, 1999, pp.87-112.
• "Style, Spectacle, Excess and The Bold and the Beautiful"", Tomorrow Never Knows: Soap on Australian Television, ed.s Kate Bowles and Sue Turnbull, Sydney: Australian Film Institute, 1994. pp.25-41.

Articles in Journals (selected)

• "Multiversality and the Neo-Baroque: Avatar, Lost and the Networked Narrative", Anuario Calderoniano, ed. Juan Luis Suarez. (Special edition "The Virtual Worlds of Calderón"), 7 (in press 2011).
  
• "Why Comics Studies?" Cinema Journal, 50, Number 3, Spring 2011, pp.113-7.
  
• "The Frenzy of the Visible in Comic Book Worlds", Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol 4(3), 2009, pp.1–12.
  
• "From Neo-Baroque to Neo-baroques?", Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. Vol. 32, issue 1, 2009, pp.265-80.
  
•  "The Wonder of Digital Effects" Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture, vol.37, no1. 2004.
• "'Hail to the King!' – the Return of Doom"Journal for Media History (Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis), No.2, December 2004, pp.100-117.
• "Paul Verhoeven and his Hollow Men", Screening the Past, issue 13, December 2001.
• "The Frenzy Of The Visible ~ Spectacle And Motion In The Era Of The Digital", Senses of Cinema, no.3, February 2000. 
• "Muscle, Excess and Rupture: Female Body Building and Gender Construction", Media Information Australia, no.75, February, 1995, pp.13-23.  
• "Muscles, Hybrids and New Bad Futures", World Art, vol.1, no.1, 1994, pp.76-81.  

Media/Audio visual:

Audio Commentary (with Wendy Haslem) for fully restored DVD film release of Metropolis (directed by Fritz Lang, 1927), 153 min. Madman Entertainment.

The People VS George Lucas, 2010 (Documentary directed by Alexandre O. Philippe). Interviewed as expert. http://www.peoplevsgeorge.com/about/

Defending the Bats: An Interview with Angela Ndalianis part 1, Confessions of an ACA- Fan: the Official Web Blog of Henry Jenkins, December 12, 2008.http://henryjenkins.org/2008/12/an_interview_with_angela_ndlia.html

Tourists and Collectors Enter the World of Tomorrow: An Interview with Angela Ndalianis (Part Two), Confessions of an ACA- Fan: the Official Web Blog of Henry Jenkins, December 15, 2008. http://henryjenkins.org/2008/12/tourists_and_collectors_are_th.html

Audio Commentary for the film Imitation of Life (directed by Douglas Sirk), 1959. Madman Entertainment.

Audio Commentary (with Wendy Haslem) for the film Western Union (directed by Fritz Lang), 1941. Madman Entertainment.

Postgraduate Supervisions

Current Ph.D.

• Daniel Golding – Space that speaks: Reading Videogame Spaces
  
• Kyle Weis – Media, Architecture and Digitisation: The Production of Space in Contemporary Hollywood Action Cinema
  
• Tessa Dwyer - Derrida, Subbing, Dubbing and the Cinema
• Karen Healey - Power and Responsibility: Boundaries in Flux in Superhero Comics Culture.
• Martyn Pedler - X-RAY Vision: Being a Superhero
• Jack Teiwes - The Superman Multimedia Franchise.
• Clare Pitkethly - The Gap in the One: teh masking of Ontological Consistency in (Super)Hero/(Super)Villain Mythology (La Trobe - external co-supervision)
• Naja McFadden - Horror Films, Found Footage and reality.
• Louise Sheedy - Radical Assembly: Montage and Collage in Documentary Responses to the Vietnam War
• Stephen Rowley - Picture-Perfect Towns: The Idealised Community and the Perils of Dream Building.
• Maura Edmond - The Look as the Hook: Image, Music & Music Video
• Mehmet Mehmet - Sound and the Cinema
• Edwina Bartlem – Interactivity and Melbourne Art Galleries (co-supervision)
• Christian McCrea - Computer Games, Technology and Hauntology
• Radha O'Meara- Rethinking Seriality (co-supervision)
• Lee-AnnTrewartha - Born Again Baroque: Contemporary Notions of the Historical Bel Composto (La Trobe - external supervision - combined creative)

Ph.D. Completions

• Erin Stapleton - I am, Myself, Sovereign: the attraction of Simulacra in Bataille's Sovereignty, 2011.
  
• Dan Torre - Processing the Animated Documentary, 2010
  
• Saige Walton - The Cinema's Baroque Flesh, 2009.
  
• Leonie Cooper - From Viewing Stars to Building Worlds: Screen Media as Figured through the Astronaut, 2009.
  
• Richard Misek - Chromatic cinema a history of black-and-white and colour, 2008.
• Allan Cameron - Modular narratives : contemporary cinema's tales about time, 2006.
• Djoymi Baker - Broadcast space : tv culture, myth and Star Trek, 2005.
• Bronwyn Morkham - Through the mind's eye : rethinking cinema and subjectivity. 2002
• Gabrielle Murray - This wounded cinema, this wounded life : violence and utopia in the films of Sam Peckinpah, 2001. (Co-supervision)
• Justin Shaw - Melodrama, social spectatorship and the modern social problem film, 2001.
• Felicity Colman - Passaic boys are hell : Robert Smithson's modes of time, 2001. (Co-supervision)

Masters Theses

• Gala Hingston, Representations of Magicians Onscreen and the Magic of the Cinema.
  
• Patrick Porter, Stories from the Buffyverse : intertextuality, temporality and the cult fandom of Buffy the vampire slayer, 2007.
• Roisin O'Dwyer, B-Film Conditions of Production and Modernist Form, 2002.
• Paul Venzo, Dare to desire : a study of Pedro Almodóvar's "imperfect masterpiece"- La Ley del deseo (1987), 2001.
• Charlotte Henry, The cyborg body, technology and identity in the new bad future, 2000 .
• Shirin Hanfi-Scott, The truth is out there : the transcendent validation of postmodernism in the X-Files, 2000.
• Mehmet Mehmet, 'You ain't bad, you aint nothin' : Michael Jackson's inauthentic authenticity, 1999.
• Karen Hildebrandt, Art, cyberspace and hypertextual accessibility, 1999.
• Kirsten Slifirski, The end of discretion ;: performing the nation, 1998.
• Trisha Huang, Hong Kong entertainment cinema : genre, auteur, postcoloniality, 1997.
• Kate Hall, Buddy Cop Films: Desire and its Concealment in a World of Race, Sex, Power and  the Pursuit of Justice, 1997.
• Sarah Guthrie, Feeling for the overflow : extending identity in the films of John Cassavetes, 1997.
• Angela Jooste, Cracks: the Art of Rosemarie Trockel, Rebecca Horn and Astrid Klein, 1996
• Frances Guerin, Risses in der Optik : the graffiti-art on the Berlin Wall, 1993.

Teaching

• SCRN20011 (106-201) Hollywood and Entertainment
  
• CULS30001 (106-320) The Digital Mediascape
  
• SCRN40009 (107-459) Screen Media and Mediated Experiences
  

• Full subject descriptions are available on the University of Melbourne Handbook.