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 and Camera Obscura, 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.

Areas of supervision

Loubna Bijdiguen (the politics of veiling in Britain); Khalid al Mkhlaafy (Arab viewers' responses to Hollywood's depictions of Arabs); Cui Su (the ethics of famine representation); Ioanna Thomadakis (Egyptian migrants in London).

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.

Current research students

Loubna Bijdiguen (the histories and politics of veiling); Onur Kömürcü (the creative labour of Turkish-German artists); Cui Su (the ethics of famine representation); Ioanna Thomadakis (Egyptian migrants in London).

Selected publications

Single-authored book

Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Edited collections

Sole editor and chapter contributor: Movie Music, The Film Reader (Routledge, 2002). Chapter title: ‘Pop and Speed: Compilation Soundtracks and the MTV Aesthetic’

Joint editor (with and chapter contributor: Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity (BFI Publishing, 2004). Chapter title: ‘ “My Generation”?: Age, Influence and Popular Music in Teen Drama of the 1990s’

Chapters in edited collections

‘ “Believe”?: Vocoders, Digital Women and Camp’ re-printed in Whiteley, S., Bennett, A. and Hawkins, S. (eds) Music, Space and Place (Ashgate, 2004)

‘Music, Video and Synaesthetic Possibility’ in Beebe, R. and Middleton, J. (eds) Music Video Studies in the New Millennium (Duke University Press, 2007) pp.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) pp.167-89

'"The Very New Can Only Come From the Very Old": Ken Russell, National Culture and the Possibility of Experimental Television at the BBC in the 1960s' in Mulvey, L. and Sexton, J. (eds) Experimental British Television (Manchester University Press, 2007) pp.70-88

‘Candyfloss’ in Donmez-Colin, G. (ed.) 24 Frames: Middle Eastern Cinema (Wallflower Press,2007) pp.13-21

'The Palestinian Road (Block) Movie: Geographies of Second Intifada Filmmaking' in Lordanova, D. et al (eds) Cinemas of the Periphery (Wayne State University Press, 2009)

Journal articles

‘ “Believe”?: Vocoders, Digital Women and Camp’ in Popular Music (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

‘The Limits of Celebrity: “Multi-Tasking” Pop Stars Who Can’t Act’ in MediaActive (Lawrence and Wishart, 2004)

‘Report on the First Ramallah International Film Festival’ in Screen 46:2 (Oxford University Press, 2005)

'"I Have One Daughter and that is Egyptian Cinema": Aziza Amir Amid the Histories and Geographies of National Allegory' in Camera Obscura Spring (Duke University Press, 2007), 137-77