College: Newnham
Research topic: Expressions of crisis in the New Hollywood
Supervisor: Prof JD Rhodes
About:
Jessica joined Cambridge Film and Screen as a PhD student after completing an MSt in Film Aesthetics at the University of Oxford. Whilst at Oxford, she completed a dissertation on female presence and the possibilities of mise-en-scène in John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence and Barbara Loden’s Wanda.
Prior to this, Jessica completed a BA in English at the University of Kent with a year at Freie Universität Berlin. Jessica’s background in English and Film has inspired a range of interests, which include European cinema, American cinema, film theory, film aesthetics, close reading, and literary studies.
Research:
Jessica’s thesis investigates expressions of crisis in a range of New Hollywood films of varied acclaim and scholarly prominence. Her work apprehends the period in question (an era itself steeped in historic, industrial, and intellectual change) by closely evaluating concomitant film forms and the ways in which they resonantly and profoundly depict crisis.
In other research, Jessica has written about modes of play and fabulation in Jacques Rivette’s Céline et Julie vont en bateau; about the emotional contours of style in Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring; and about cinemas of ephemerality, specifically in David Lean’s Brief Encounter, Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 and Chantal Akerman’s Saute ma ville.
Scholarships/Prizes:
- Vice-Chancellor’s and Newnham College Scholarship (Cambridge Trust, University of Cambridge, full funding for doctoral research)
- Worcester College Distinction Prize (University of Oxford)
- Humanities Rotary Prize (University of Kent, for the top ranked undergraduate student on the BA English and American Literature programme)
Other activities and roles:
Jessica is the founding editor-in-chief of a student-run journal of film criticism; she has written essays for a few online magazines, including MUBI Notebook; she has attended various film festivals as a press delegate and worked as a pre-selection juror for Cornwall Film Festival; she is a member of MOVIOLA reading group, jointly founded by professors at the University of Oxford and the University of Bristol; and she has worked both as a private literature tutor and in admissions at the University of Oxford.
