Dr Michael Hammond PhD

Emeritus Fellow in Film History

Dr Michael Hamond is Emeritus Fellow in Film History. He is the author of numerous books and articles on British and Hollywood film history. His most recent monograph is The Great War in Hollywood Memory, 1919-1939 published in the Horizons of Cinema Series for State University of New York (SUNY) Press in 2019.

Film aesthetics has a history that is inextricably linked with cultural and political history. The challenge is to understand how and why.

I am a leading international specialist in Early and Silent Film history, an established area that draws upon and informs Film Studies and in turn enhances and conjoins a number of disciplines within and beyond the Humanities.

My international reputation rests on a large body of work that spans both silent film history and contemporary film and television studies. In the field of silent film history I am known for my two monographs, The Big Show: British Cinema Culture in the Great War, 1914-1918 (2006) and The Great War in Hollywood Memory, 1919-1939 (2019) along with my co-edited collections British Silent Cinema in the Great War, (2011) The Great War and the Moving Image (2017). I am the author of numerous  journal articles and book chapters that cover the range of film history and aesthetics from the silent to the contemporary period.

Following my retirement in July 2020 I became Emeritus Fellow in Film History at Southampton.

My current research project is the history of live music to film in the African American segregated cinemas of the silent period.