Press Office home > Find an expert > Professor Matthew Pateman

Professor Matthew Pateman

Professor of Contemporary Popular Aesthetics, and Head of School, Performance and Screen Studies, Kingston University.

Professor Matthew Pateman Areas of expertise

Find out more about Professor Matthew Pateman

Overview

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and one of the world's foremost philosophers are among the wide-ranging research interests of Kingston University's professor of contemporary popular aesthetics. Professor Matthew Pateman joined the university in 2010, following a 16-year-long career at the University of Hull, where he was eventually head of Film and Media.

As well as teaching courses in popular culture, he will be pursuing his research into the cult television heroine alongside a study of French post-modernist Jean-Francois Lyotard.  Lyotard, who died in 1998, was best-known for his analysis of postmodernism.  Professor Pateman is equally passionate about the work of Joss Whedon - creator of the US television series Buffy, and its spin-off Angel - about whom he is writing a book. Prof Pateman maintains without Buffy, which he regards as ground-breaking television, there would be no Wire, House, 24, Lost or Heroes.  "Some may view the study of popular culture as superficial or peripheral," he said, but insists it is in fact a serious academic discipline.  

 

 

Qualifications

Year gained Subject
1995 PhD, Leeds University.
1991 PGCE, Leeds University.
1990 BA (hons) English (first class).

Research

Research and Scholarship:

 

Books

  • Joss Whedon, The Television Series, Manchester University Press, 2011 (forthcoming).
  • Julian Barnes, Northcote House, Writers and Their Work Series (revised 2nd edition) 2011, forthcoming.
  • The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, McFarland and Company, 2006 (276 pages; ISBN: 0-7864-2249-1). (2007 Winner of the International Journal of Buffy Studies' Award for Best Book on Joss Whedon.)
  • Julian Barnes, Northcote House, Writers and Their Work Series, 2002. (106 pages; ISBN: 0-7463-0978-3). Reprinted 2008.

 

Editions

  • Aesthetics - A Special Issue of Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies, (Issue 22, Volume 6.2, December 2006 ISSN: 1546 - 9212).

 

Articles

  • 'The New Black: How Whedon shaped a universe in Firefly', The Essential Whedon Reader, ed. Rhonda Wilcox, University Press of Kentucky, 2012 (forthcoming).
  • 'Deathly Serious: Mortality, Morality and the Mise-en-scène in Firefly and Serenity', Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Joss Whedon's Further Worlds, eds. Rhonda Wilcox and Tanya Cochran, I. B. Tauris, 2008.
  • 'The Curious Case of Willow's Disappearing Jewishness in Buffy the Vampire Slayer', Shofar: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Volume 25.4, ed. Mikel Koven, Summer 2007, pp. 64 - 78.
  • 'Structuring Stardom: Identity and the Transmigration of Image in the work of David Bowie', Techknowledgies: New Cultural Imaginaries in the Humanities, Arts, & TechnoScience, ed. Mary Valentis, Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars' Press, 2007, pp. 130 - 52.
  • 'Introduction', Aesthetics - A Special Issue of Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies, Volume 6.2, ed. Matthew Pateman, December 2006, pp. 1 - 6.
  • 'Restless Readings - Involution, Aesthetics and Buffy', Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies, Vol 5.3, eds. Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery, Middle Tennessee State University, February 2006, pp.54 - 72.
  • 'Lolita - A Region in Flames', Metaphors of Economy in Critical Studies 25, eds. Nicole Bracker and Stefan Herbrechter. New York and Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005, pp. 113 - 25.
  • 'Post-structuralism', The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory Vol 13, 2005, ed. Martin McQuillan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 224 - 39.
  • 'Post-structuralism', The Year's Wok in Critical and Cultural Theory Vol 11, 2003, ed. Martin McQuillan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp.276 - 290.
  • ''You say tomato': Britishness in Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in Cercles: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone  Number 8, ed. Georges Claude Guilbert, August 2003, pp. 103 - 13, <http://www.cercles.com/n8/pateman.pdf>.
  • 'Precision and Uncertainty in Flaubert's Parrot', Flaubert's Parrot de Julian Barnes: Un symbole du logos? eds. Antoine Capet, Phillipe Romanski, Nicole Terrien, Aissatou Sy-Wonyu. Rouen: Publications de l'Université de Rouen, 2002, pp.47 - 58.
  • 'Violence and Recuperation in Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Aesthetics and Pragmatics of Violence, eds. Michael Hensen and Annette Pankrantz. Passau: Verlag Karl Stutz, 2001, pp.81 - 88.
  • 'The force of 'Sublime' in The Farce of Sodom', Dryden and the World of Neoclassicism Studies in English and Comparative Literature, Vol. 17 eds. Wolfgang Gortschacher and Holger Klein. Tubingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2001, pp.135 - 44.
  • 'Lyotard's patient pedagogy', Parallax 17 October - December 2000, pp.48 - 57.
  • 'Jean-François Lyotard: An Obituary', Parallax 10 January - March 1999, pp. 129 - 31.
  • 'Coming on Strong: The Abjection of Pornography', Masculinity as Signs, ed. Rowland A. Amsterdam - Atlanta GA: Editions Rodopi, 1998, pp.162 - 77.
  • 'Is There a Novel in This Text? Identities of Narrative in Flaubert's Parrot', in L'exile et l'allegorie dans le roman anglophone contemporain ed. Michel Morel. Paris: Editions Messene, 1998, pp. 35 - 48.
  • 'Philosophy in the Courtroom: Barnes, Lyotard and the Search for Justice', Modernity - Postmodernity: From the Personal to the Global, eds., Axford B. and Browning G. Oxford: Oxford Brooks University Press, 1996, pp. 80 - 99.
  • 'Julian Barnes and the Popularity of Ethics', Postmodern Surroundings, ed., S, Earnshaw. Amsterdam - Atlanta GA: Editions Rodopi 1994, pp. 179 - 91.

 

Review Essays

  • 'Postfeminist Gothic: Critical Interventions in Contemporary Culture. Eds. Benjamin A. Brabon and Stéphanie Genz', Journal of Gender Studies Vol 17.1, March 2008.
  • 'Vikki Mahaffey Reauthorizing Joyce', James Joyce Broadsheet No. 56, June 2000.
  • 'Vincent Sherry: James Joyce: 'Ulysses' and David Fuller: James Joyce's 'Ulysses'', James Joyce Broadsheet No. 45, October 1996.
  • 'Attila the Stockbroker's Scornflakes and Lemn Sissay's Rebel Without Applause', Poetry and Audience, Vol.35 N0.1, March 1993.

Conference Highlights

Professor Pateman is an experienced speaker on the conference circuit, across the UK and also in the USA and Australia.

Academic Accolades

  • Winner of the 2007 Whedon Studies Association prize for best book.
  • Shortlisted for 2008 and 2009 Whedon Studies Association prize for best article.

Press Office contacts

For journalists only, the Press Office can be contacted on:


Tel: +44 (0)20 8417 3034
Out of hours: 07771 977768
Email: press@kingston.ac.uk


If you are not a journalist but wish to speak to one of our academic experts, please call +44 (0)20 8417 9000.

Kingston University

Room 2, River House
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey KT1 1LQ

Latest news stories