Staff Profiles

Lindsay teaches both film and television studies - both general survey modules (such as Popular Cinema) and focused modules drawn from her expertise (such as Film Noir).

Modules taught

• Popular Cinema
• Film and Media Journalism
• Film Noir
• Cinema and Technology
• Film Studies Research methods

Supervision

Lindsay has supervised at MA and doctoral level and welcomes proposals for students wishing to study aspects of popular cinema and television.

Lindsay's research focuses on violence and gender in postmodern and postfeminist media culture.  She has published numerous articles and chapters on the subject of the crime and action genres on film and television. She would be intersted in supervising doctoral work on any aspect of violence and popular visual culture.

Research group membership

Lindsay is an active member of Brookes' FSRU (Film Studies Research Unit). 

Research grants and awards

In 2016 Lindsay was awarded an Oxford Brookes Research Excellence Fellowship to support her research into gladiator fighting in popular visual culture.

Research projects

She is currently working on a project mapping the gladiatorial scenario in popular film, television and videogames.

Books

• Steenberg L, Are you not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media, Bloomsbury (2020)
  ISBN: 9781350120075 eISBN: 9781350120099
  Abstract

  Anglo-American culture is marked by a gladiatorial impulse: a deep cultural fascination in watching men fight each other. The gladiator is an archetypal character embodying this impulse and his brand of violent and eroticised masculinity has become a cultural shorthand that signals a transhistorical version of heroic masculinity.

  Frequently the gladiator or celebrity fighter - from the amphitheatres of Rome to the octagon of the Ultimate Fighting Championships - is used as a way of insisting that a desire to fight, and to watch men fighting, is simply a part of our human nature. This book traces a cultural interest in stories about gladiators through twentieth and twenty-first-century film, television and videogames.

  Website 
• Steenberg L, Forensic Science in Contemporary American Popular Culture, Routledge (2012)
  ISBN: 9780415891882
  Abstract

  This book identifies, traces, and interrogates contemporary American culture's fascination with forensic science. It looks to the many different sites, genres, and media where the forensic has become a cultural commonplace. It turns firstly to the most visible spaces where forensic science has captured the collective imagination: crime films and television programs. In contemporary screen culture, crime is increasingly framed as an area of scientific inquiry and, even more frequently, as an area of concern for female experts. One of the central concerns of this book is the gendered nature of expert scientific knowledge, as embodied by the ubiquitous character of the female investigator. Steenberg argues that our fascination with the forensic depends on our equal fascination with (and suspicion of) women's bodies—with the bodies of the women investigating and with the bodies of the mostly female victims under investigation.

Journal articles

• Tasker Y, Steenberg L, 'The Female Detective and Middlebrow Crime TV: Writers, Investigation and Authorship in Bones and Castle'
  MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture (7) (2021)
  ISSN: 2003-167X eISSN: 2003-167X
  Abstract

  
  

  Website 
• Steenberg L, 'Bruce Lee as Gladiator: Celebrity, Vernacular Stoicism, and Cinema'
  Global Media and China 4 (3) (2019) pp.348-361
  ISSN: 2059-4364 eISSN: 059-4372
  Abstract

  This article situates Bruce Lee’s films and star persona in the context of wider patterns in global genre cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. I argue for a connection between the Western reception of Lee’s films and those of the mid-century Italian sword and sandal films, beginning with the Colosseum fight between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris that concludes Way of the Dragon (1972). From the dojo fights of Fist of Fury (1972), through the tournament structure in Enter the Dragon (1973), to his statistically led re-animation in the EA Sports UFC 3 (2018) videogame, Bruce Lee can be usefully considered as a gladiator. Bruce Lee, as fighter, performer and star persona, contributes to the enduring gladiatorial archetype that is an embedded feature in the Western visual imaginary. Furthermore, I argue that the gladiator archetype itself shifted because of Lee’s onscreen roles and the discourse that surrounds his star persona. In order to map these shifts and patterns of confluence, I chart three main points of impact that Lee has had on the gladiatorial archetype using his Western-facing roles on film and television, namely the television series Longstreet (1971–1972) and Enter the Dragon (1973). First, I consider the inclusion of martial arts and, second, the opening up of the field of representation to different models of masculinity, including a leaner body type and a non-White – in this case, ethnically Chinese – gladiator. The third point is the emphasis on a popular, or vernacular, stoicism. Ultimately, I elucidate the relationship between the gladiator, Bruce Lee, and philosophy, arguing that Lee embodies a vernacular stoicism that has become one of the defining features of the post-millennial gladiator and notions of heroic masculinity in popular culture more widely.
  

  Website 
• Steenberg L, 'Crime TV's Undercover Halloween'
  Journal of Popular Television 5 (1) (2017) pp.83-99
  ISSN: 2046-9861
  Abstract In order to interrogate patterns of seasonal television, this article looks at Halloween themed episodes of long-running American crime television programmes such as CSI, Bones and, in particular, Criminal Minds. It argues that Halloween on crime TV is predictably transgressive – offering conventional fantasies of masquerade and consumption, rather than subversive challenges to the genre’s status quo. On crime television, Halloween has harnessed the logic of the urban legend to present nostalgic visions of a festival which has become fundamentally televisual in nature. The thematic underpinnings of this televisual holiday are anxieties around children in public space and the ritual re-imagining of the risks they face when celebrating Halloween. Website 
• Steenberg L, 'The Fall and Television Noir'
  Television and New Media 18 (1) (2016) pp.58-75
  ISSN: 1527-4764
  Abstract This article analyzes the Belfast-set BBC series The Fall (2013–) as an illustrative example of television noir. It aims to use noir scholarship to investigate The Fall’s complex gender politics and genre position, and, more significantly, to use The Fall to illuminate the complex ways in which noir currently operates across Anglo-American television and culture. The Fall is self-conscious, if not self-reflexive, in its mobilization of noir to aspire to the cinematic. This article argues that the series, and others like it, use noir as a legitimation strategy, often to excuse prurient stories of sexualized violence. The act of labeling something noir, particularly a visual fiction, is a way of insisting on its status as art. I conclude that the system of noir (and its associations with art and authenticity) is unable to contain the excesses of the serial killer mythology and Gothic inflection of its postfeminist investigator.Website 
• Russo P, Steenberg L, 'Imagining the Post-forensic Landscape: The Crime Drama on Transnational Television'
  New Review of Film and Television Studies 14 (3) (2016) pp.299-303
  ISSN: 1740-0309
  Abstract EditorialWebsite 
• Steenberg L, Tasker Y, 'Pledge Allegiance: Gendered Surveillance in Homeland'
  Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 54 (4) (2015) pp.132-138
  ISSN: 0009-7101 eISSN: 1527-2087
  Website 
• Steenberg L, 'A Dream of China: Translation and Hybridisation in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'
  Entertext 6 (1) (2006)
  Abstract In order to explore the tensions between surface forms, this essay approaches Ang Lee’s
  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a transnational generic hybrid, rather than as a
  “pure” example of the wuxia genre. This article interrogates issues of translation,
  gendered violence and excess to explore the fracturing and subversive potential of the
  film. Rather than seeing Crouching Tiger as a window into the spiritual and martial truths
  of ancient China, the paper examines it as an amalgam of genres and (national) identities
  recognises its status as part of a global cinematic imaginary.
  Website 
• Steenberg L, 'Framing War: Commemoration, War and the Art Cinema'
  UBCinephile: the film studies journal of the University of British Columbia 1 (2005)
  ISSN: 1712-9265
  Website 

Book chapters

• Steenberg L, 'Crime and Celebrity' in Rafter N (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Oxford University Press (2017)
  ISBN: 9780190264079
  Abstract
  
   
  Website 
• Steenberg L, Tasker Y, 'Women Warriors: From Chivalry to Vengeance' in Gjelsvik A, Schubart R (ed.), Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones and Multiple Media Engagements, Bloomsbury (2016)
  ISBN: 978-1-5013-0290-9
  Website 
• Steenberg L, '"Get More Action" on Gladiatorial Television: Simulation and Masculinity on "Deadliest Warrior"' in Brenda R. Weber (ed.), Reality Gendervision: Sexuality and Gender on Transatlantic Reality Television, Duke University Press (2014)
  ISBN: 978-0-8223-5682-0
  Website 
• Steenberg L, Tasker Y, 'North of quality? Quality television, and the suburban crimeworld of Durham County' in Detecting Canada: Essays on Canadian Detective Fiction, Film, and Television, Wilfrid Laurier University Press (2013)
  ISBN: 9781554589265
  
• Steenberg L, 'Uncovering the Bones: Trauma and Hurricane Katrina in Contemporary Crime Television' in Old and New Media After Katrina, Palgrave Macmillan (2011)
  ISBN: 9780230102668
  Abstract Book description Five years after Hurricane Katrina, this thoughtful collection of essays reflects on the relationship between the disaster and a range of media forms. The assessments here reveal how mainstream and independent media have responded (sometimes innovatively, sometimes conservatively) to the political and social ruptures “Katrina” has come to represent. The contributors explore how Hurricane Katrina is positioned at the intersection of numerous early twenty-first century crisis narratives centralizing uncertainties about race, class, region, government and public safety. Looking closely at the organization of public memory of Katrina, this collection provides a timely and intellectually fruitful assessment of the complex ways in which media forms and national events are hopelessly entangled.
• Steenberg L, 'A natural instinct for forensics: trace evidence and embodied gazes in the bone collector' in The millennial detective: essays on trends in crime fiction, film and television, 1990-2010, McFarland (2011)
  ISBN: 9780786458516
  
• Steenberg L, 'A pathological romance: authority, expert knowledge and the postfeminist profiler' in Women on screen: feminism and femininity in visual culture, Palgrave Macmillan (2011)
  ISBN: 9780230229655
  Abstract Book description Women on Screen makes a timely intervention into critical debates about the representation of feminist and feminine identities in contemporary visual culture. Bringing together the latest research from a range of international scholars, the essays in this collection interrogate how and why certain formulations of feminism and femininity are currently prevalent in mainstream cinema and television. Through a lively engagement with recent feminist theory, this volume offers compelling new insights into a variety of postfeminist media phenomena, from chick flicks and reality shows to independent cinema and quality drama. In doing so, it asks important questions about the relationship between feminism, femininity, and visual culture: How has the legacy of second wave feminism been negotiated on screen? To what extent are contemporary portrayals of women informed by anxieties about femininity? What is the role of feminist theory in analyzing and shaping representations of female identity in the twenty-first century?
• Steenberg L, '“And What Are All These People Watching?”: The American Celebrity Industry, Genre, and Film Adaptations of School Shootings' in Eric Madfis and Adam Lankford (ed.), All American Massacre: The Tragic Role of American Culture and Society in Mass Shootings, Temple University Press ()
  Abstract

  
  

Other publications

• Steenberg L, 'Capitalising on Crime: Selling Murder and Expertise'
  (2016) Website 

Areas of expertise

Areas of specialist expertise include: 

• Feminism / Feminist Film Theory
• Postfeminist media culture
• Genre - in particular the crime and action genres
• Cultural Theory
• Postmodernism
• Noir (on film and television)
• Celebrity studies

Conferences

• Hardboiled History Conference (Warwick, May 2017)
  "Transnational Television Noir"
• British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Conference (Bristol, April 2017)
  "Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves: Gladiator Fighting Beyond the Sword and Sandal Film"
• Celebrity Studies (Amsterdam, June 2016)
  “Celebrity, True Crime, and Expertise”
• Crime, Capitalism and Media Conference (Winchester, April 2016)
  “Capitalising on Crime”
• Console-ing Passions: International Conference on TV, Audio, Video, New Media and Feminism (Dublin, June 2015)
  “Crime TV, Romance and the Middlebrow”
• Symfrozium (Norwich, May 2015)
  “Disney’s Frozen as Nordic Noir”
• Celebrity Studies (London, June 2014)
  “Gladiators Ready: Celebrity, Violence and the Legacy of Ancient Rome”
• Console-ing Passions: International Conference on TV, Audio, Video, New Media and Feminism (Leicester, June 2013)
  “Stardom, Masculinity and the Ultimate Fighting Championships”
• Gender Politics & Reality TV, University College (Dublin, July 2011)
  “Gladiatorial Television: Masculinity on Spike TV”
• NECS: European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (London, June 2011)
  “Education and Sensation: The Autopsy of British Lifestyle TV”
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Los Angeles, March 2010)
  “The Postfeminist Gothic on American Crime Television”
• Cinema, Television and the Past (Norwich, February 2009)
  “Hollywood Imagines the Archaeological Past:
  Egypt as Heterotopia in the Mummy Franchise”
• Figurations of Knowledge
  Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (Berlin, June 2008)
  “Affect and Archive: Trace Evidence and Archival Sensibilities on CSI”
• The Literary Art of Murder (Newcastle, April 2008)
  “Cabinets of Curiosity: Visualising Trace Evidence in the Screen Adaptation
  of Jeffrey Deaver’s The Bone Collector”
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Philadelphia, March 2008)
  “Uncovering the Bones: Hurricane Katrina in Contemporary Crime Television”
• Screen (Glasgow, July 2007)
  “Profiling Queerness: Behavioural Sciences and the Retelling of the
  Leopold and Loeb Case”
• Feminism and Popular Culture Conference (Newcastle, June/July 2007)
  “Postfeminism and the Female Investigator: Authority, Expert Knowledge
  and Angelina Jolie”
• University of Winchester – Violent Film Conference (Winchester, July 2006)
  “Sexy/Dead: Postfeminism and Violence in the Crime Thriller”
  
• Film & History Journal’s War and Film Conference – (Dallas, Nov 2004)
  “Shots in the Jungle: Vietnam and the Evolving Landscape of War”.
•  

Further information

@ljsteenberg