Academic Essays
These peer-reviewed pieces have appeared as articles in academic journals, chapters in edited collections of essays, or as posts on peer-reviewed blogs. Click on the title of each essay for further details.
FORTHCOMING
The Dirty Harry Problem
In: ReFocus: The Films of Don Siegel, ed. by Jamie Popowich and Aaron Tucker. Edinburgh University Press, 2026.
Kiryu: Cyborg Reincarnation and Rebel Monstrosity in the Millennium Mechagodzilla Duology
In: Creature Redux: Considering the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Chimera in Fiction and Popular Culture, ed. by Samantha Baugus and Ayanni C. H. Cooper. University of Mississippi Press, 2026.
How Popular Culture Launders Torture
In: The Long Road to Closing Guantanamo: Action, Accountability and Justice.
Edited by Sara Birch, Richard Kotter, Hugh Sandeman and Andy Worthington. Cambridge: Ethics Press, 2026.
An essay surveying justifications for torture found in contemporary popular culture.
Target Confirmed: Drone Visuality, Dehumanisation and the Weeping Soldier in Eye in the Sky
In: War Faces on Screen: Photography, Film, and the Politics of Representation.
Edited by Mani Sharpe and Katy Parry.
London: Bloomsbury, 2026, pp. 129-148.
A critique of 'shoot and cry' sentimentality and anthropometric dehumanisation in drone movie Eye in the Sky (2015).
The Ticking Bomb Drone Strike: Drone Warfare and Emergency Ethics in Eye in the Sky
In: Human Rights in the Age of Drones: Critical Perspectives on Post-9/11 Literature, Film and Art
Edited by Muhammad Waqar Azeem.
London: Palgrave, 2026, pp. 239-257.
doi: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-08191-9_11
A critique of the ticking bomb scenario as it is represented in drone movie Eye in the Sky (2015).
The Blackness of the Beast: Godzilla in the Heart of Darkness
Revista De Estudios Norteamericanos [Journal of American Studies] 28 (December 2024): Special Section: Darkness in the American Audiovisual Imagination, pp. 5-35.
doi: https://doi.org/10.12795/REN.2024.i28.8
An essay about colour, intertextuality, and political sovereignty in Godzilla 1954 and Godzilla 2014.
Introduction: Militarisation and Pleasure
Culture, Theory and Critique 64.1-2 (2023): Militarisation and Pleasure, pp. 1-18.
First online publication: 10/10/2024.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2024.2394417
Introductory essay for Militarisation and Pleasure. Co-authored with Amy Gaeta.
The Colour of Monstrosity in Godzilla 2014 and Godzilla Vs Kong
PopMeC Peer-reviewed Blog, 17/8/2023.
url: https://popmec.hypotheses.org/5186
Reflections on the aesthetic role of colour in two MonsterVerse Godzilla movies, Godzilla 2014 and Godzilla Vs Kong (2021).
Blame the War, Not the Troops: Good Kill
Journal of War and Culture Studies 15.4 (2022): Special Issue on the Aesthetics of Drone Warfare, pp. 408-424.
url: https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2116187
A critique of 2014 drone movie Good Kill.
The Report and the Task of Critique: Torture, Exposure, and the Spectacle of Accountability
Quarterly Review of Film and Video 39.7 (2022), pp. 1619-1633.
First online publication: 19/8/2021.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2021.1963164
A critique of the anti-torture politics of 2019 thriller The Report.
Rebel Inc., Colonialism Simulator
First Person Scholar Peer-reviewed Blog. 27/7/2022.
url: http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/rebel-inc-colonialism-simulator/
A critique of the colonial logics of 2018 video game Rebel Inc.
Journal of Film and Video 73.3 (2021), pp.23-33.
url: https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.3.0023
A critique of the anti-torture politics of 2014 thriller Camp X-Ray.
Graner’s Laugh: The Conceptual Architecture of a Guantanamo Rape Joke
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44.1 (2018), pp. 107-130.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/698279
A close reading of a prison rape joke in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.
Knowing the Double Agent: Islam, Uncertainty, and the Fragility of the Surveillant Gaze in Homeland
In: Surveillance, Race, Culture.
Edited by Antonia Mackay and Susan Flynn.
London: Palgrave, 2018, pp. 125-143.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77938-6_7
A critique of the Islamophobia and racism of Homeland, with an emphasis on the show's representation of surveillance.
‘The Sweet Tang of Rape’: Torture, Survival, and Masculinity in Ian Fleming’s Bond Novels
Feminist Theory 18.2 (2017), pp. 137-158.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1464700117700043
An argument about the parallels between torture and seduction in Ian Fleming's Bond novels.
Guantanamo Boy and the Task of Critique
The Lion and the Unicorn 40.3 (2016), pp. 245-261.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/uni.2016.0023
A critical reading of the anti-torture position of Young Adult novel Guantanamo Boy.
Terrorism as Sexual Envy: Adversarial Masculinities in Two Fictions of Ticking Bomb Torture
In: Terrorist Transgressions: Gender and the Visual Culture of the Terrorist.
Edited by Sue Malvern and Gabriel Koureas.
London: IB Tauris, 2014, pp. 181-201.
A reading of the economy of masculinity in the torture scenes in The Centurions and 24.