Role
Professor O’Shaughnessy is an Emeritus Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Journalism and Media.
Before retirement, he was the Research Co-ordinator for the Media and Communications research unit.
Career overview
Professor O'Shaughnessy is a leading specialist on cinema and politics, especially but not only in relation to French film. Topics covered by his work include:
- European cinema in the current crisis
- Cinema and the machinic
- Film and work / film and worker suicide
- Film, debt and gifts
- The films of Laurent Cantet
- The films of Jean Renoir particularly the committed works and the intersection of politics and style.
- French cinema and colonialism
- Stardom, genre, masculinities
- Cinema and precarity
- Cinema and plasticity
Research areas
Research areas
Professor O'Shaughnessy has supervised or is supervising PhDs on:
- The Children’s Film Foundation
- Poetic realism in contemporary British Films
- British soap operas and alcohol education
- Beyond the new French extreme cinema
- Saudi social media as an alternative public sphere
- The press and democratisation in Iraqi Kurdistan
- The gueules cassées of World War One and film representation
- Contemporary French political cinema
- The work of Spanish cantautores (singer-song writers) in the transition to democracy
- French film and neoliberal labour
- Drag cultures in Nottingham
- Queer temporalities in American Independent cinema
Unfortunately, being retired, he is no longer available to act as a PhD supervisor. For more information on Research Degrees at NTU, visit the Doctoral School.
External activity
- External examiner for PhDs, MPhils and MRes degrees at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle and at Queen Mary's and Kings (London University)
- Previously external examiner for French at BA or MA level at De Montfort University, Manchester Metropolitan University, Keele University, Newcastle University and Warwick University.
- Professor O'Shaughnessy regularly presents films to non-university audiences, both in Nottingham and further afield.
Professor O'Shaughnessy's major collaborations are as follows:
- Co-organised two international conferences: 'French Cinema and Commitment', Nottingham Trent University, September, 2002 (with Graeme Hayes) and 'La France et la Crise' (annual conference of the ASMCF) in September 2010 (with Chris Reynolds)
- Co-edited book Cinéma et Engagement, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2005 (with Graeme Hayes)
- Co-edited number of French Politics, Culture and Society, 23:3, 2005 'French cinema and globalisation' (with Graeme Hayes)
- Co-edited special number of Modern and Contemporary France, 'La France et la Crise', 20:2, 2012 (with Chris Reynolds)
Professor O'Shaughnessy has also been involved in a range of collaborative projects with colleagues from the USA, France and the UK.
- Professor O’Shaughnessy was part of a team of European academics, led by Prof. Ana Manzanas of the University of Salamanca, entitled Hospitality in European Film
- Professor O'Shaughnessy was awarded one semester or half-year sabbaticals by the AHRC in 2003-4 and in 2012-13. The 2012-13 award was to support the writing of a study of the films of Laurent Cantet.
- A number of smaller awards for research travel and conference organisation have also been awarded.
Publications
Single authored books:
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism: French and Francophone Belgian Cinema and the Crisis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474448642
Laurent Cantet. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. ISBN 9780719091506
La grande illusion. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. ISBN 9781848850576
The new face of political cinema: French film since 1995. Oxford, Berghahn, 2007. ISBN 9781845453220
Jean Renoir. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. ISBN 0719050634
Journal articles:
Malabou's Cineplastics and Contemporary French Film: Jacques Audiard, Céline Sciamma and Mia Hansen-Løve. Film-Philosophy 28:3, 2024, 428-453
Reinventing democracy in Paris and Madrid: Sylvain George’s Benjaminian urban montage. French Cultural Studies, 34(1), pp. 106-125. https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221144374
Review essay: Governing by debt by Maurizio Lazzarato and Signs and machines: capitalism and the production of subjectivity by Maurizio Lazzarato. SubStance, 46 (1), 2017. ISSN 0049-2426
Thinking Contemporary Political Cinema with Cantet. South Central Review, 33 (2) 2016, pp. 44-56. ISSN 1549-3377
The crisis before the crisis: reading films by Laurent Cantet and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne through the lens of debt. SubStance, 43 (1) 2014, pp. 82-95.
French film and work: the work done by work centered films. Framework: the Journal of Cinema and Media, 53 (1) 2012, pp. 155-171.
Breaking the circle: 'Le crime de Monsieur Lange' and the contemporary illegibility of the radical text. South Central Review, 28 (3) 2011, pp. 26-44.
Filming work and the work of film. L'Esprit créateur, 3, 2011, pp. 59-73.
French film and the new world of work: from the iron to the glass cage. Modern and Contemporary France, 19 (4) 2011, pp. 427-442.
Book chapters:
Precarious Narratives in French and Francophone Belgian Cinema. In: E. Cuter, G. Kirsten, H. Prenzel eds., Precarity in European Film: Depictions and Discourses, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022, pp. 31-48. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110707816-002
Representations: fiction, documentary and the political. In: M. TEMPLE and M. WITT, eds., The French cinema book. (2nd ed.) London: BFI Palgrave, 2018, pp. 297-303. ISBN 9781844574667
Cinema, sex tourism and globalisation in American and European cinema. In: E. MAZIERSKA and L. KRISTENSEN, eds., Contemporary cinema and neoliberal ideology. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018, pp. 217-232. ISBN 9781138235731
Between the I and the we: Jean Renoir’s films of the Popular Front era. In: J. WARDAUGH, ed., Politics and the Individual in France 1930-1950. Oxford: Legenda, 2017, pp. 41-57. ISBN 9781909662247
Contemporary political cinema. In: A. FOX, M. MARIE, R. MOINE and H. RADNER, eds., A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, pp. 117-135. ISBN 9781444338997
Journal special number:
La France et la crise, Modern and Contemporary France, 20:2. Reynolds, C. and O'Shaughnessy, M. eds.
Press expertise
Professor O'Shaughnessy can offer comment on the French and other responses to the crisis; contemporary European film; contemporary political cinema; and French cinema.