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Dr Malcolm Cook

Associate Professor in Film Studies, Director of Programmes

Dr Malcolm Cook is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Southampton.

My research interests include animation, early cinema and film music/sound. I have published a number of journal articles, chapters and books on these areas, including my monograph Early British Animation: From Page and Stage to Cinema Screens (2018). I have also co-edited (with Professor Kirsten Thompson) a collection titled Animation and Advertising (2019). (Further details can be found on the Research and Publications tabs below)

I was appointed Lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton in 2015. I have previously taught at Middlesex University, Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London), and Birkbeck (University of London). My research informs my teaching on modules about animation, early cinema and film history.

I have a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London. I also hold an MA in History of Film and Visual Media from Birkbeck, and a BA in Film and Literature from the University of Warwick.

Research

Publications

Teaching

Contact

Research interests

My research investigates the way cinema has been influenced by and interacted with other art forms and cultural practices, and the implications this has for definitions of cinema, both historically and in the present day. Animation, early cinema, and film music/sound, individually and in combination, have all provided areas of research that are particularly well suited to this rich topic and are the basis of my existing publications. My monograph, Early British Animation: From Page and Stage to Cinema Screens (2018), explores early British animated cartoons prior to the advent of sound cinema, with a particular focus on the relationship between the moving image and the graphic arts and other pre-cinematic entertainments, as well as the neurological processes involved in the perception of these forms. While always rooted in Film studies, the intermedial focus of my research has necessarily required openness to interdisciplinary methods, drawing on art history, theatre and performance studies, literary and adaptation studies, and contemporary work in the neurosciences.

My most recent research focuses on the role of animation in advertising and other applied fields, such as science, education and the military. Animation has been extensively utilised in these fields, shaping the way the world was understood and developing animation techniques and technologies. However, this has been largely ignored in favour of framing animation as art or entertainment, making this a rich field for further historical investigation. I have published on this topic in the collections Aardman Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion (2020) and The Animation Studies Reader (2018) and I co-edited (with Professor Kirsten Thompson) a collection titled Animation and Advertising (2019) that demonstrates the breadth of this topic.

Early British Amimation - Dr Malcolm Cook's latest book — Early British Animation

Final HIQ cover. — Animation and Advertising

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Articles

Cook, M. (2013). Book review: Cinema beyond film: media epistemology in the modern era. Early Popular Visual Culture, 11(1), 94-96. https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2012.759446
Cook, M., Jones, D., & Jones, N. (2013). The Erskine Williams Collection. Early Popular Visual Culture, 11(4), 409-437.
Cook, M. (2013). The lightning cartoon: animation from music hall to cinema. Early Popular Visual Culture, 11(3), 237-254. https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2013.817146

Books

Cook, M., & Thompson, K. M. (Eds.) (2019). Animation and advertising. (Palgrave Animation). Palgrave Macmillian. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27939-4
Cook, M. (2018). Early British animation: from page and stage to cinema screens. Palgrave Macmillian. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73429-3
Sexton, M., & Cook, M. (2015). Adapting science fiction to television: small screen, expanded universe. (Science Fiction Television). Rowman & Littlefield.

Book Chapters

Cook, M. (2020). ‘All you do is call me, I'll be anything you need’: Aardman Animations, commercials, and music videos. In A. Honess Roe (Ed.), Aardman Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion I.B. Tauris.
Cook, M., & Sexton, M. (2018). Adaptation as a function of technology and its role in the definition of medium. In The Routledge Companion to Adaptation Routledge.
Cook, M., & Sexton, M. (2018). Adaptation as a function of technology and its role in the definition of medium specificity. In The Routledge Companion to Adaptation (pp. 361-371). Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315690254
Cook, M. (2018). Advertising and public service films. In The Animation Studies Reader (pp. 1-11). Bloomsbury Academic.
Cook, M. (2018). Sing them again: audience singing in silent film. In R. Barton, & S. Trezise (Eds.), Music and Sound in Silent Film (1st ed.). Routledge.
Cook, M. (2017). A primitivism of the senses: the role of music in Len Lye’s experimental animation. In H. Rogers, & J. Barham (Eds.), The Music and Sound of Experimental Cinema Oxford University Press.
Cook, M. (2015). Pixar, 'The Road to Point Reyes' and the long history of landscape in new visual technologies. In C. Pallant (Ed.), Animated Landscapes: History, Form, and Function Bloomsbury Academic.
Cook, M. (2012). Animating the audience: singalong films in Britain in the 1920s. In J. Brown, & A. Davison (Eds.), The Sounds of the Silents in Britain Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199797615.003.0013
Cook, M. (2011). Visual music in film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman. In C. de Mille (Ed.), Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 (pp. 206-228). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Conference

Cook, M. (2014). Performance times: The lightning cartoon and the emergence of animation. In K. Askari, S. Curtis, F. Gray, L. Pelletier, T. Williams, & J. Yumibe (Eds.), Performing New Media: 1890-1915. The edited DOMITOR proceedings from Brighton, UK, 2012 John Libbey.

Reviews

I teach the following modules:

FILM1036/7 - 'What is Cinema? Film, Art and Technology'

FILM2023 - Animation: Technology, culture and industry

FILM2002 - Early and Silent Cinema, 1895-1929

FILM6043 Preparing for the Dissertation

FILM6027 Film Studies Dissertation

As well as supervising BA final year and MA dissertations.

Dr Malcolm Cook
Film
Humanities
University of Southampton
Avenue Campus
Highfield
SO17 1BF
United Kingdom
Email: M.Cook@soton.ac.uk

Room Number: 65/1063

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