Prof Nathan Abrams

Professor in Film

Contact info

Tel: + 44 (0)1248382196 
Email: n.abrams@bangor.ac.uk
Twitter: @ndabrams; https://bangor.academia.edu/NathanAbrams

Overview

In addition to being a Professor in Film at Bangor University, I am also the lead director for the Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies. I co-convene the British Jewish Contemporary Cultures network. I lecture, write and broadcast widely (in English and Welsh) on British and American popular culture, history film and intellectual culture. I co-founded Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal and my most recent books are New Wave, New Hollywood: Reassessment, Recovery, and Legacy (with Greg Frame, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), The Bloomsbury Companion to Stanley Kubrick (with I.Q. Hunter, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film (with Robert Kolker, Oxford University Press, 2019), Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Hidden in Plain Sight: Jews and Jewishness in British Film, Television, and Popular Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2016), and The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (IB Tauris; Rutgers University Press, 2012). In addition to having edited books on Alien (with Greg Frame; forthcoming from Oxford University Press) and Eyes Wide Shut (with Georgina Orgill, forthcoming from Liverpool University Press), I am currently writing a biography of the legendary film director Stanley Kubrick with Robert Kolker to be published by Faber & Faber in 2023. I am also interested in issues of sustainability and the environment, exploring the problem of single-use plastic pollution and its solution. 

Research

I have written widely on transatlantic Jewish film, history, politics and popular culture with specific reference to the United States and the United Kingdom. My current research falls into three key areas:

  • Jews, Jewishness and Judaism in Popular Culture, 1990–present -- recent and changing representations of Jewishness as ethnicity and religion in contemporary cinema and other forms of popular culture.
  • Public Intellectuals and American Culture -- exploring, theorising and widening the notion of the function of the intellectual in post-war America, with a specific focus on Norman Podhoretz, neoconservatives, Commentary magazine, the New York Intellectuals, Arthur Miller and Stanley Kubrick.
  • Belonging and Diasporas in Europe -- Jewish Diasporic communities in Europe with a particular emphasis on the UK.
  • Sustainability and the Environment -- research into messaging, representations, semiotics and solving the issue of single-use plastic pollution with a focus on disposable masks and energy drinks. 

 I am co-coordinator of the British Jewish Contemporary Cultures Network

Teaching and Supervision

I would be interested in supervising postgraduates in any of the areas in which I teach and research . I currently supervise and co-supervise the following research students:

  • Sean Alexander, David Cronenberg's Jewishness;
  • Atheer Aljubouri, The Iraq War on Film;
  • Christopher Bainbridge, Stanley Kubrick as musician;
  • Michael Lipiner, Stanley Kubrick and the Holocaust; 
  • William Peel, Steven Spielberg's Jewishness;
  • Megan Rainbird, DreamWorks Animation;
  • Dion Wyn Hughes, Childhood in the Films of Stanley Kubrick. 

Previous topics have included, The Planet of Apes as History, Stereotypes of Wales and the Welsh on Film, The Jews of Bangor and Llandudno; The Jewish Diaspora in Wales; Jews in Italian Cinema; and Washing/Clotheslines on Film.

I teach the MA in Film Studies. I am also responsible for the following undergraduate modules:

  • Stanley Kubrick: Auteur
  • America on Film
  • Film Language
  • Introduction to Mass Culture

Postgraduate Project Opportunities

American Studies and History

Film Studies

Film History

Jewish Studies and History

Stanley Kubrick

Celtic Jewish Studies

British Jewish History

Sustainability and the Environment

Contact Info

Tel: + 44 (0)1248382196 
Email: n.abrams@bangor.ac.uk
Twitter: @ndabrams; https://bangor.academia.edu/NathanAbrams

Research outputs (213)

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Prof. activities and awards (330)

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Accolades (1)

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Media coverage (51)

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