Lecturer

Department of Film, Media & Journalism

University of Stirling

Stirling

FK9 4LA
Scotland

UK

After completing a BA in Communications and English Literature at The University of Iowa in 1996, Sarah received an MPhil from the University of Glasgow in Creative Writing. She received her PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2003. Her thesis examined the adaptation of contemporary Scottish and Irish literature to film, and primarily focused on the work of Bernard MacLaverty, Patrick McCabe, Christy Brown, Roddy Doyle, Irvine Welsh, Christopher Rush, Alan Warner, and William McIlvanney.

She has also written on a number of areas of film adaptation including the heritage genre, adaptations of Shakespeare, and the use of classic literature in the teenpic.

Recent research has focused on the work of the Orcadian filmmaker and poet, Margaret Tait. In 2006, she was awarded a small research grant from the Carnegie Trust to conduct research at the principal archive related to the filmmaker, in Kirkwall. A number of articles resulted from the research and she is currently developing the work into a book-length publication.

Teaching and research supervision

Sarah welcomes PhD applications related to Scottish and Irish Cinema, adaptation theory and/or practice, or those examining the interdisciplinary relations between literature, poetry, film and new media.

Recent publications

Co-author with Alan Riach, ‘Demons in the Machine: cinema and modernism in twentieth-century Scotland’, in Jonny Murray, Fidelma Farley and Rod Stoneman (eds.), New Scottish Cinema (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), forthcoming.

‘ "Ploughing a lonely furrow": Margaret Tait and ‘professional’ filmmaking practices in 1950s Scotland’, in Ian Craven (ed), Amateur Cinema (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), forthcoming.

'Contemporary Scottish Cinema’, Neil Blain and David Hutchison (eds), The Media in Scotland (Edinburgh: EUP, 2008), pp. 151-165, ISBN 0748628002.

 ‘Stalking the image: Margaret Tait and Intimate Filmmaking Practices’, Screen, 49/2, Summer 2008, pp. 216-221, ISSN 0036-9543.

 ‘”People, not issues”: Adapting Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal’, Richard Allen and Stephen Regan (eds.) Irelands of the Mind: Memory and Identity in Modern Irish Culture (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), pp. 129-141, ISBN 1-84718-422-7.

Co-author, with Gordon Gibson, 'Scottish Television Drama and Parochial Representation’in Bertold Schoene (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 106-113, ISBN 0748623965.

'Scotland, heritage and devolving British cinema', Screen, vol. 46, no. 2, Summer 2005, pp. 241-245, ISSN 0036-9546.

'The Conquering Heritage of British Cinema Studies and the "Celtic Fringe"' in Kevin Rockett and John Hill (eds.), National cinema and beyond: Studies in Irish film 2 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), pp. 47-56, ISBN 1-85182-924-5.

'Cultural Ventriloquism: The Voice-over in Adaptations of Contemporary Irish and Scottish Literature', in Kevin Rockett and John Hill (eds.), National cinema and beyond: Studies in Irish film, 1 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), pp. 125-134, ISBN 1-85182-873-7.

Co-author, with Willy Maley, '"Almost afraid to know itself": Macbeth and Cinematic Scotland', in Eleanor Bell and Gavin Miller (eds.), Scotland in Theory: Reflections on Scottish Literature and Culture (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 97-106, ISBN 90-420-1028-2.

Co-author, with Willy Maley, 'Tartan Tarantino?: Getting Medieval with Macbeth', The Drouth,Winter 2003, pp. 9-13, ISSN 1474 6109.

"Cool Intentions:  the literary classic, the teenpic and the 'chick flick'” in Deborah Cartmell et al. (eds, Retrovisions: Film/Fiction (London: Pluto Press, 2001), pp. 74-86, ISBN 0 7453 1583 6 (hbk), ISBN 07453 1578 X (pbk).