Director of Research, Film & TV.
Overview
Dr Brooker is the head of Kingston University's Film and Television Department, and the author of eight books on various aspects of popular culture, including the box office film hits Batman, Star Wars and Blade Runner. His next monograph, on Christopher Nolan's Batman films, is due out in 2012. Dr Brooker's work primarily studies popular cinema within its cultural context, situating it historically and in relation to surrounding forms such as literature, comic books, video games, television and journalism. A member of six academic journal editorial boards, including the International Journal of Cultural Studies, he has given keynote lectures around the world, including at Oxford and Harvard universities.
A seasoned media commentator, with appearances on BBC Radio 4, BBC 2, BBC 3, Channel Five, Radio Five Live and America's NBC channel to name but a few, he is expected to be in heavy demand to comment on the release of Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight Rises' in 2012.
Dr Brooker is also currently one of three regular film reviewers for the THE - Times Higher Education supplement, and has been asked to contribute to the THE annual textbook guide. A selection of his most recent reviews can be found here:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=417112
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=417189§ioncode=26
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=417442&c=2
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=417178§ioncode=26
From 2013 to 2018 Dr Brooker will be the first British editor of the Cinema Journal, the publication of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. SCMS is 'the leading scholarly organization in the United States' and 'Cinema Journal is the leading scholarly publication in the field of Cinema and Media Studies.
Research
Books:
Hunting the Dark Knight: Batman in 21st Century Popular Culture (I B Tauris, forthcoming 2012)
Star Wars: A New Hope, (BFI Film Classics/Palgrave, 2009)
The Blade Runner Experience (Wallflower, 2006)
Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll's Alice in Popular Culture (Continuum, 2004)
Using The Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans (Continuum, 2002)
The Audience Studies Reader, co-edited with Deborah Jermyn (Routledge, 2002)
Batman Unmasked: Analyzing a Cultural Icon (Continuum, 2000)
Teach Yourself: Cultural Studies (Hodder, 1998)
Postmodern After-Images: A Reader in Postmodern Film, Television and Video, co-edited with Peter Brooker (Arnold, 1997)
Chapters in books:
Chapter in Denise Mann (ed.) Wired TV: Postnetwork Television's Virtual Worlds (forthcoming)
"The Further Adventures of Alice", introduction to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Worth Literary Classics, forthcoming)
"Living on Dawson's Creek: Teen Viewers, Cultural Convergence and Television Overflow" in Barrie Gunter and David Machin (eds.), Media Audiences (Sage, forthcoming)
"Gin Talking", in David Lavery and Michele Byers (eds.) On The Verge of Tears (forthcoming)
"TV Out of Time: Watching Cult Shows on Download", in Roberta Pearson (ed.) Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show (I.B. Tauris, 2009)
"A Sort of Homecoming: Fan Viewing and Symbolic Pilgrimage" in Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and Lee Harrington (eds.), Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World (New York University Press, 2007)
"The Best Batman Story: The Dark Knight Returns" in Alan McKee (ed.), Beautiful Things in Popular Culture, (Blackwell, October 2006)
"The Blade Runner Experience: Pilgrimage and Liminal Space" in Will Brooker (ed.), The Blade Runner Experience (Wallflower, 2006)
"New Hope: The Postmodern Project of Star Wars" in Sean Redmond (ed.), Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Reader (Wallflower, 2004)
"Living on Dawson's Creek: Teen Viewers, Cultural Convergence and Television Overflow" in Annette Hill and Roger C. Allen (eds.), The Television Studies Reader (Routledge, 2004)
"Straight Readings" in David Lavery and Angela Hague (eds.), Teleparody: Predicting/Preventing the TV Discourse of Tomorrow (Wallflower, 2002)
"Rescuing Strange Days: Fan Response to a Commercial and Critical Failure", in Deborah Jermyn and Sean Redmond (eds.), Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor (Wallflower, 2002)
"Filling In Spaces: Internet Fandom and the Continuing Narratives of Star Wars, Blade Runner and Alien", in Annette Kuhn (ed.), Alien Zone 2, (Verso, 1999)
"Batman: One Life, Many Faces" in Imelda Whelehan and Deborah Cartmell (eds.), Adaptations (Routledge, 1999)
"New Hope: The Postmodern Project of Star Wars" in Postmodern After-Images, Brooker and Brooker (Arnold, 1997)
"Pulpmodernism: Tarantino's Affirmative Action" in Imelda Whelehan et al, (eds.) Pulping Fictions (Pluto, 1996).
Journal articles:
"Now You're Thinking With Portals: Media Training for a Digital Environment", International Journal of Cultural Studies (forthcoming 2010)
"Maps of Many Worlds: Remembering Computer Game Fandom in the 1980s", Transformative Works and Cultures vol.1 no.2 (Spring 2009)
"Camera-Eye, CG-Eye: Videogames and the 'cinematic'", Cinema Journal vol. 48 no.3 (Spring 2009)
"All our Variant Futures: The Many Narratives of Blade Runner: The Final Cut", Popular Communication vol.7 no.2 (2009)
"Everywhere and Nowhere: Vancouver, Fan Pilgrimage and the Urban Imaginary", International Journal of Cultural Studies vol.10. no.4 (December 2007)
"Star Wars fans, DVD, and Cultural Ownership," Will Brooker interviewed by Derek Johnson, The Velvet Light Trap no.56 (Fall 2005)
"Everything Will Flow", Flow vol.1 no.12 (March 2005)
"It Is Love: The Lewis Carroll Society as Fan Community", American Behavioral Scientist vol.48 no.7 (March 2005)
"The Many Lives of the Jetman: A Case Study in Video Game Analysis", Intensities vol.1 no.2 (Fall 2002)
"Living on Dawson's Creek: Teen Viewers, Cultural Convergence and Television Overflow", International Journal of Cultural Studies vol.4 no.4 (December 2001)
"Reading Racism: Interpretive Communities and The Phantom Menace", Continuum vol.15 no.1 (April 2001)
"Under Construction: Cultural Studies in Cyberspace", International Journal of Cultural Studies vol. 1.no. 3 (Sage, December 1998)
Areas of expertise