Research Interests / Ongoing Projects
The main focus of my research for the past few years has been the representation of memory in literary and cinematic narrative, and cultural memory more broadly. Since publishing a monograph on memory in/and film in 2010, I have moved into adaptation and transmedia studies, combining my interests in both film and literary studies with what I see as the need to defend critical theory’s reputation in the face of current anti-theoretical tendencies from both ends of the ideological spectrum. Lately I have been exploring the diverse field of critical posthumanism, one area in which theory is alive and well and re-asserting its relevance and centrality to academic work. The critical posthumanist approach, inflected by an attention to the post-secular nature of much contemporary culture, allows for productive critiques of heretofore influential theories of affect, the new materialism (so-called), OOO, and the fate of the image in a post-cinematic moment as it intersects with—or determines—contemporary notions of subjectivity. My current research project, therefore, is on posthuman memory. But memory, arguably, has always been posthuman.
Dr. Kilbourn’s latest publication is The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino: Commitment to Style. New York, NY: Wallflower/Columbia University Press, 2020.
Research / Areas of Expertise:
- Film Theory
- Memory Studies
- Critical posthumanism
- Postsecular cinema
- Italian Cinema
- Adaptation (film and literature)
- Transmediality
- Paolo Sorrentino
- W.G. Sebald