Goldsmiths - University of London

Kay Dickinson

Kay Dickinson’s work to date has been intrigued by moments of interaction between different media industries, particularly those of music, film and television.  It is concerned with the how the boundaries between these forms are drawn up and how the traditions governing production, representation, dissemination and consumption of each differentiated or amalgamated sphere are generated.  This research has culminated on a book-length dialectical study of music on screen – from soundtracks and recorded musical performances, to biopics and musicians-turned-actors – entitled Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together (Oxford University Press, 2008).  Concentrating primarily on instances of conflict and political exchange between media industries, this monograph is dedicated to an analysis of labour rights in the United States and Britain within the so-called post-industrial period.  Its investigations pivot upon the centrality of the cultural and media economies to those countries from the 1950s until the present day.

More recently, Kay’s research has turned towards media from the Arab world, particularly Egyptian, Palestinian and Syrian film production, as well as the networks consolidated by Arab world film festivals.  Her aim is to understand all this from amidst the politics and practices of travel, be that anything from migration and forced exile to tourism. She has published articles on these topics in various anthologies, as well as in the journals Screen, Camera Obscura and Framework, and has also collaborated on two film festivals held in the West Bank, Palestine.  At present, she is working on a second monograph, Arab Cinema Travels, and is co-editing an anthology called The Arab Avant-Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East (Welseyan University Press, 2012).

Areas of supervision

Arab media and culture; creative labour; music and the moving image; teen culture.

Previous PhD Students

Cui Su - Famine: A Crisis of History and Rhetoric

Current PhD Students

Loubna Bijdiguen - Press and Political Discourses of the Veil in France and Morocco

Onur Kömürcü  - "We Bark from the Third Row" Racialised and Precarious Artistic Labour: An Ethnographic Study of the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Berlin

Tom Tlalim - Resounding Conflicts: A Practice-Based Art and Research PhD Exploring Aspects of Political Conflict in Sound Art

Research interests

Kay has recently embarked upon a monograph-long study, Arab Cinema Travels, which is dedicated to the relationship of Arab cinema to the experiences and industries of travel. Alongside this, she is co-editing The Arab Avant-Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East with Benjamin J. Harbert and Thomas Burkhalter.

Selected publications

Books

• Movie Music, The Film Reader (Routledge, 2002) ISBN: 0415281601 Sole editor and contributor of chapter: “Pop and Speed: Compilation Soundtracks and the MTV Aesthetic” p.143-152
• Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity (bfi publishing, 2004) ISBN: 0851709990 Joint editor (with Glyn Davis) and contributor of: ““My Generation”?: Age, Influence and Popular Music in Teen Drama of the 1990s” p.99-111
• Off Key: When Film and Music Won’t Work Together (Oxford University Press, 2008) ISBN: 978-0-19-532664
• The Arab Avant-Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East (Wesleyan University Press, 2012) Editor with Thomas Burkhalter and Benjamin J. Harbert

Chapters in Books

• ““Such Time When Young’uns Run the Roads”: the Question of the Traveling Child” in Sargeant, J. and Watson, S. (eds) Lost Highways: An Illustrated History of the Road Movie (Creation Press, 2000) ISBN: 1871592682 ” p.193-206
• ““Believe”?: Vocoders, Digital Women and Camp” re-printed in Whiteley, S., Bennett, A. and Hawkins, S. (eds) Music, Space and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity (Ashgate, 2004) ISBN: 0754637379 p.163-180 Reprinted again in Hawkins, S. (ed.) Pop Music and Easy Listening (Ashgate, 2012)
• “Music, Video and Synaesthetic Possibility” in Beebe, R. and Middleton, J. (eds) Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones (Duke University Press, 2007) ISBN: 0822341395 p.13-29
• “Troubling Synthesis: The Horrific Sights and Incompatible Sounds of “Video Nasties”” in Sconce, J. (ed.) Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style and Politics (Duke University Press, 2007) ISBN: 0822339536 p.167-188
• “Changes in Direction: Ken Russell and the Limits of Experimental Television” Mulvey, L. and Sexton, J. (eds) British Experimental Television (Manchester University Press, 2007) ISBN: 0719075556 p.70-88
• “Candyfloss” in Donmez-Colin, G. (ed.) 24 Frames: Middle Eastern Cinema (Wallflower Press, 2007) ISBN: 1905674104 p.13-22
• “The Palestinian Road (Block) Movie: Everyday Geographies of Second Intifada Filmmaking” in Iordanova, D. et al (eds) Cinema at the Periphery (Wayne State University Press, 2010) ISBN: 0814333885 p.201-227
• Pop and Speed: Compilation Soundtracks and the MTV Aesthetic” reprinted in McQuinn, J. (ed.) Popular Music and Multimedia (Ashgate, 2012) 

Journal Articles (Selection)

• "Wendy Carlos: The Synthesizer, the Soundtrack and Transgender Identity” in Radical Deviance (1998) p.20-2
•  “Pop and Speed: Compilation Soundtracks and the MTV Aesthetic” in Scope (Nottingham University, June 2001) http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/scopearchive/articles/pop-speed-and-mtv.htm
•  ““Believe”?: Vocoders, Digital Women and Camp” in Popular Music 20:2 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) p.333-347
•  “The Limits of Celebrity ‘Multi-Tasking’: Pop Stars Who Can’t Act” in MediaActive (Lawrence and Wishart, 2004) p.74-85
• “Report on the First Ramallah International Film Festival” in Screen 46:2 (Oxford University Press, 2005) p.265-274
• ““I Have One Daughter and that is Egyptian Cinema”: Aziza Amir amid the Histories and Geographies of National Allegory” in Camera Obscura 21:1 64 (Duke University Press, 2007) p.137-77
• “Syrian Cinema: Out of Time?” in Screening the Past 31, Autumn 2011 (La Trobe University, 2011)
•  “The State of Labor and Labor for the State: Syrian and Egyptian Cinema beyond the 2011 Uprisings” in Framework 53:1, Spring 2012 (Wayne State University Press, 2012)

Journal Editorships

• “In Focus – Arab Uprisings” in The Cinema Journal, 51:1 Fall 2012 (Texas University Press, forthcoming) Editor and contributor