- 0406621997
- I am Dean of the Graduate Research School at the University of New England. Previously I held academic leadership pos... moreI am Dean of the Graduate Research School at the University of New England. Previously I held academic leadership positions as Professor and Head of the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology (2019-2020), Department Chair and Professor of Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology (2018-2019), Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Director of Higher Degrees by Research, and Convenor of the Film and Television Studies Major at the University of Queensland (2006-2017), Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies and Convenor of the Film Studies Major at the University of Cape Town (2002-2005), and Acting Chair of Mass Communication in the School of Media, Communication and Culture at Murdoch University, where I completed my PhD in 2000.
My research expertise is in media studies and the philosophy of film. I have published widely in these fields, authored four scholarly books and over 50 refereed research publications, and been awarded competitive research grants by the Australian Research Council (DP10100309), the Ernest Oppenheimer Foundation, the USA National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Centre, and the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. I have held academic fellowships and visiting research professorships at Hong Kong Baptist University (2019), the UQ Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies (2011), and the University of California Berkeley (2005).
I am a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Queensland Human Rights Commission, a member of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, and I serve on the editorial board of Projections: Journal of Movies and Mind, the leading international journal in the field of cognitive film studies, and the editorial board of the International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing (IJHAC), one of the world’s premier multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed forums for digital humanities research.
I had the great honour of winning the Australian Learning and Teaching Council National Award for Teaching Excellence (2011), which is the highest form of recognition for a university teacher in Australia. I have also earned the University of Queensland Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (2008), the Faculty of Arts Teaching Excellence Award, University of Queensland (2008), the Merit Award for Distinguished Teachers, University of Cape Town (2004 and 2005) and the Murdoch University Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award (2000). My record of research leadership and research higher degree supervision, administration, and examination includes serving as Director of Research Higher Degrees at UQ from 2006-2017, supervising 21 PhDs and 4 MPhil/MFA students to completion and examining 14 PhDs and 7 MPhil dissertations.edit
Introduction to edited book: Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes: The Real, the Virtual, the Cinematic, Eds. Erik Champion, Jane Stadler et al. Routledge, 2022. Link to publication:... more
Introduction to edited book:
Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes: The Real, the Virtual, the Cinematic, Eds. Erik Champion, Jane Stadler et al. Routledge, 2022.
Link to publication: https://www.routledge.com/Screen-Tourism-and-Affective-Landscapes-The-Real-the-Virtual-and-the/Champion-Lee-Stadler-Peaslee/p/book/9781032355962#:~:text=Resources%20Support%20Material-,Book%20Description,places%20they%20depict%20or%20film.
Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes: The Real, the Virtual, the Cinematic, Eds. Erik Champion, Jane Stadler et al. Routledge, 2022.
Link to publication: https://www.routledge.com/Screen-Tourism-and-Affective-Landscapes-The-Real-the-Virtual-and-the/Champion-Lee-Stadler-Peaslee/p/book/9781032355962#:~:text=Resources%20Support%20Material-,Book%20Description,places%20they%20depict%20or%20film.
Research Interests:
Imagined Landscapes teams geocritical analysis with digital visualization techniques to map and interrogate films, novels, and plays in which space and place figure prominently. Drawing upon A Cultural Atlas of Australia, a... more
Imagined Landscapes teams geocritical analysis with digital visualization techniques to map and interrogate films, novels, and plays in which space and place figure prominently. Drawing upon A Cultural Atlas of Australia, a database-driven interactive digital map that can be used to identify patterns of representation in Australia's cultural landscape, the book presents an integrated perspective on the translation of space across narrative forms and pioneers new ways of seeing and understanding landscape. It offers fresh insights on cultural topography and spatial history by examining the technical and conceptual challenges of georeferencing fictional and fictionalized places in narratives. Among the items discussed are Wake in Fright, a novel by Kenneth Cook, adapted iconically to the screen and recently onto the stage; the Australian North as a mythic space; spatial and temporal narrative shifts in retellings of the story of Alexander Pearce, a convict who gained notoriety for resorting to cannibalism after escaping from a remote Tasmanian penal colony; travel narratives and road movies set in Western Australia; and the challenges and spatial politics of mapping spaces for which there are no coordinates.
Chapter 4 Abstract: This chapter uses geovisualization techniques to investigate spatial politics and mobility in the film and novel Red Dog and to reveal complex relationships that are otherwise obscured by the deployment of quirky humor, apparently harmless cultural stereotypes, and a feel-good narrative. In particular, we examine tensions between the mining industry, the Pilbara community, and myths of national and regional identity conveyed in cultural narratives including those of Indigenous Australians and those perpetuated in the western genre. We undertake a pragmatic form of geographical and narrative mapping to reinterpret not just the relationship between cultural politics and geography, but also the important role that mobility plays in the narrative of colonial progress and expansion. In the case of Red Dog, we use geovisualization as a mode of narrative analysis in order to make visible the complex spatial history that is implicit in the relationship between the story of Red Dog’s wanderings and the socio-economic development of the Pilbara region.
Chapter 4 Abstract: This chapter uses geovisualization techniques to investigate spatial politics and mobility in the film and novel Red Dog and to reveal complex relationships that are otherwise obscured by the deployment of quirky humor, apparently harmless cultural stereotypes, and a feel-good narrative. In particular, we examine tensions between the mining industry, the Pilbara community, and myths of national and regional identity conveyed in cultural narratives including those of Indigenous Australians and those perpetuated in the western genre. We undertake a pragmatic form of geographical and narrative mapping to reinterpret not just the relationship between cultural politics and geography, but also the important role that mobility plays in the narrative of colonial progress and expansion. In the case of Red Dog, we use geovisualization as a mode of narrative analysis in order to make visible the complex spatial history that is implicit in the relationship between the story of Red Dog’s wanderings and the socio-economic development of the Pilbara region.
Research Interests:
The twelve essays collected in Pockets of Change locate adaptation within a framework of two overlapping, if not simultaneous, creative processes: on the one hand, adaptation is to be understood as an acknowledged transposition of an... more
The twelve essays collected in Pockets of Change locate adaptation within a framework of two overlapping, if not simultaneous, creative processes: on the one hand, adaptation is to be understood as an acknowledged transposition of an existing source-that is, the process of adapting from; on the other hand, adaption is also a process of purposeful shifting and evolving of creative practices in response to external factors, including but not limited to other creative works-in other words, the process of adapting to. This book explores adaptation, then, as an active practice of repetition and as a reactive process of development or evolution. The essays also extend beyond the production, transformation, and interpretation of texts to interrogate the values and practices at work in cultural transition and transformation during periods of social and historical change.
Research Interests:
Media and Society examines the role of the media in contemporary society and analyses representations of the world found in advertisements, film, television, photographs, and language. It presents theoretical approaches clearly and... more
Media and Society examines the role of the media in contemporary society and analyses representations of the world found in advertisements, film, television, photographs, and language. It presents theoretical approaches clearly and includes many examples, definitions, issues and explanations to aid students’ understanding.
New this this Edition
Updated case studies and ‘Issues’ boxes, which encourage students to reflect further on the issues discussed in each chapter.
Margin notes and design make the text simple for students to navigate.
New this this Edition
Updated case studies and ‘Issues’ boxes, which encourage students to reflect further on the issues discussed in each chapter.
Margin notes and design make the text simple for students to navigate.
Research Interests:
The most powerful films have an afterlife. Their sensory appeal and their capacity to elicit involvement in story, character and conflict reaches beyond the screen to subtly reframe the way spectators view ethical issues and agents within... more
The most powerful films have an afterlife. Their sensory appeal and their capacity to elicit involvement in story, character and conflict reaches beyond the screen to subtly reframe the way spectators view ethical issues and agents within the narrative, and in the world outside the cinema. Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience and Narrative Film questions how cinematic narratives relate to and affect ethical life. Extending Martha Nussbaum and Wayne Booth’s work on moral philosophy and literature to consider cinema, Dr. Stadler shows that film spectatorship can be understood as a model for ethical attention that engages the audience in an affective relationship with characters and their values. Building on Vivian Sobchack’s Address of the Eye and Carnal Thoughts, she uses a phenomenological approach to analyse ethical dimensions of film extending beyond narrative content, arguing that the camera describes experience and views screen characters with an evaluative form of perception: an ethical gaze in which spectators participate. Films discussed include Dead Man Walking, Lost Highway, Batman Begins, Nil By Mouth, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Research Interests:
Screen Media offers screen enthusiasts the analytical and theoretical vocabulary required to articulate responses to film and television. The authors emphasise the importance of 'thinking on both sides of the screen'. They show how to... more
Screen Media offers screen enthusiasts the analytical and theoretical vocabulary required to articulate responses to film and television. The authors emphasise the importance of 'thinking on both sides of the screen'. They show how to develop the skills to understand and analyse how and why a screen text was shot, scored, and edited in a particular way, and then to consider what impact those production choices might have on the audience.
Stadler and McWilliam set production techniques and approaches to screen analysis in historical context. They demystify technological developments and explain the implications of increasing convergence of film and television technologies. They also discuss aesthetics, narrative, realism, genre, celebrity, cult media and global screen culture. Throughout they highlight the links between screen theory and creative practice.
With extensive international examples, Screen Media is an ideal introduction to critical engagement with film and television.
'Screen Media offers a systematic approach to film and television analysis. The examples chosen by the authors are both appropriate and timely, and are presented in a very lively and readable form that will appeal to an international readership.' - Rebecca L. Abbott, Professor of Film, Video + Interactive Media, Quinnipiac University, USA
Stadler and McWilliam set production techniques and approaches to screen analysis in historical context. They demystify technological developments and explain the implications of increasing convergence of film and television technologies. They also discuss aesthetics, narrative, realism, genre, celebrity, cult media and global screen culture. Throughout they highlight the links between screen theory and creative practice.
With extensive international examples, Screen Media is an ideal introduction to critical engagement with film and television.
'Screen Media offers a systematic approach to film and television analysis. The examples chosen by the authors are both appropriate and timely, and are presented in a very lively and readable form that will appeal to an international readership.' - Rebecca L. Abbott, Professor of Film, Video + Interactive Media, Quinnipiac University, USA
Research Interests:
This article provides a meta-theoretical overview of the central research questions, concepts, and lines of conflict at the nexus between media and emotions. It interrogates key terms such as affect and emotion, discusses a variety of... more
This article provides a meta-theoretical overview of the central research questions, concepts, and lines of conflict at the nexus between media and emotions. It interrogates key terms such as affect and emotion, discusses a variety of influential approaches in emotion research, and identifies debates and tensions in the field of study. Within this vast and complex interdisciplinary field and the broad range of affective phenomena it covers, we concentrate primarily on various types of media-induced emotions, with a focus on the development of ideas about screen media and spectatorship.
Research Interests:
There is a peculiar paradox at the crux of debates about imagination and cinema, given that both imagination and fiction film can involve image formation, fantasy or falsification, and the creative projection of possibilities. On the one... more
There is a peculiar paradox at the crux of debates about imagination and cinema, given that both imagination and fiction film can involve image formation, fantasy or falsification, and the creative projection of possibilities. On the one hand, critics have held that cinema precludes imaginative activity on the part of the audience because the work of the imagination is done for us in the production of images and fantasies on screen. On the other hand, cinema has fuelled fears that imaginative stimulation will lead audiences to sympathize with characters who contravene moral, legal and social values, and to imitate what they see on screen. Indeed, the concern that films can be morally dangerous has served as justification for censorship in the two largest film industries in the world via the American Motion Picture Production Code (1930-67) and India's Central Board of Film Certification (1952-). In response to overarching questions about how imagination is involved in making sense of ethical experience in and through narrative film, this article develops an account of imaginative engagement with cinema, concentrating on the moral imagination as it relates to empathy, ethical perception and imagining others' inner lives.
Research Interests:
Cite as: Stadler, Jane. “Emotion and the Cultivation of Ethical Attention in Narrative Cinema” A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value, Eds. Mette Hjort and Ted Nannicelli, Wiley Blackwell, 2021. 190–208. Link to edited book:... more
Cite as: Stadler, Jane. “Emotion and the Cultivation of Ethical Attention in Narrative Cinema” A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value, Eds. Mette Hjort and Ted Nannicelli, Wiley Blackwell, 2021. 190–208.
Link to edited book: https://www.wiley.com/en-au/A+Companion+to+Motion+Pictures+and+Public+Value-p-9781119677116
Link to edited book: https://www.wiley.com/en-au/A+Companion+to+Motion+Pictures+and+Public+Value-p-9781119677116
Research Interests:
From Jeffrey Dahmer's "zombie cannibalism" and Charles Manson's Spahn Movie Ranch exploits to Ivan Milat's backpacker murders and Snowtown's "bodies in barrels," serial killings have spawned media genres and become macabre tourist... more
From Jeffrey Dahmer's "zombie cannibalism" and Charles Manson's Spahn Movie Ranch exploits to Ivan Milat's backpacker murders and Snowtown's "bodies in barrels," serial killings have spawned media genres and become macabre tourist attractions. While tourism and moviegoing are associated with leisure and entertainment, both activities also have disquieting dimensions including the experience of negative emotions for horror movie fans and "dark tourists" fascinated by suffering and death. This chapter focuses on film-induced dark tourism related to serial killings, analysing the affective qualities of both the screen experience and tourists' visits to related locations. What role, we ask, do genre conventions and the representation of hunting grounds and gravesites in serial killer film and television play in the construction of audience engagement and touristic behaviour? We argue that films positioned at varied points on the aesthetic continuum from factual to fictional representations of serial killings make different affective appeals to the audience. Where genre films offer a visceral emotional charge often combining horror with disturbing closeness to the killer and their victims, social realism and true crime provide socio-cultural context and invite the audience to adopt an investigative, evaluative role. Genre and style also influence whether moral emotions such as compassion and contempt are elicited. The inclination to visit the sites of trauma represented on screen and to collect photographs or "murderabilia" is in some ways akin to the killer's compulsion to revisit crime scenes and keep souvenirs. We contend this distinguishes dark tourists' behavioural and affective responses from those who are merely fans of horror or true crime genres.
Cite as: Stadler, J. and Hawkes, L. “Serial Killer Cinema and Dark Tourism: The Affective Contours of Genre and Place.” Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes, Eds. Erik Champion, Jane Stadler et al. Routledge, 2022. 158–179.
Cite as: Stadler, J. and Hawkes, L. “Serial Killer Cinema and Dark Tourism: The Affective Contours of Genre and Place.” Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes, Eds. Erik Champion, Jane Stadler et al. Routledge, 2022. 158–179.
Research Interests:
The screen is the material and imaginative interface where biology meets technology. It is the nexus between science and fiction, where technological and ethical concerns surrounding synthespians, representations of replicants, and... more
The screen is the material and imaginative interface where biology meets technology. It is the nexus between science and fiction, where technological and ethical concerns surrounding synthespians, representations of replicants, and manifestations of synthetic biology come into play. This analysis of digital imaging and cinematic imagining of virtual actors and synthetic humans in films such as Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) examines the ethical implications of digital embodiment technologies and cybernetics. I argue that it is necessary to bring together science and the arts to advance understandings of embodiment and technology. In doing so, I explore commonalities between ethical concerns about technobiological bodies in cultural and scientific discourse and developments such as the creation of virtual humans and "deepfake" digital doubles in screen media.
Research Interests:
PAGE PROOFS (please see Projections for finished article): Murray Smith's book "Film, Art, and the Third Culture" makes a significant contribution to cognitive film theory and philosophical aesthetics, expanding the conceptual tools of... more
PAGE PROOFS (please see Projections for finished article): Murray Smith's book "Film, Art, and the Third Culture" makes a significant contribution to cognitive film theory and philosophical aesthetics, expanding the conceptual tools of film analysis to include perspectives from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Smith probes assumptions about how cinema affects spectators by examining aspects of experience and neurophysiological responses that are unavailable to conscious, systematic reflection on experience and aesthetic techniques. This article interrogates Smith's account of emotion, empathy, and imagination in cinematic representation and film spectatorship, placing his work in dialogue with other recent interventions in the fields of cinema studies and embodied cognition. Smith's contribution to understanding the role of emotion in screen studies is vital, and when read in conjunction with recent publications by Carl Plantinga and Mark Johnson on ethical engagement and the moral imagination, this new work constitutes a notable advance in film theory.
Research Interests:
The long-form television drama series Hannibal (Fuller 2013–2015) thematises the embodied imagination and the elicitation of empathy and ethical understanding at the level of narrative and characterisation as well as through character... more
The long-form television drama series Hannibal (Fuller 2013–2015) thematises the embodied imagination and the elicitation of empathy and ethical understanding at the level of narrative and characterisation as well as through character engagement and screen aesthetics. Using Hannibal as a case study, this research investigates how stylistic choices frame the experiences of screen characters and engender forms of intersubjectivity based on corporeal and cognitive routes to empathy; in particular, it examines the capacity for screen media to facilitate what neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese terms intercorporeality. As a constitutive aspect of intersubjectivity and social understanding that works through embodied simulation, intercorporeality invites a reconceptualisation of empathy and its association with ethical motivation and insight. Hannibal also introduces cannibalism as a dark metaphor for the incorporation of another into oneself, reflecting on empathy's ill-understood potential for negative affect and unethical consequences.
Research Interests:
This is a draft of a chapter about atopia (feeling out of place) and Australian Gothic film and television, written for the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Australian Cinema, edited by Felicity Collins, Jane Landman, and Susan Bye.
Research Interests:
Using Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979) as a case study, this paper investigates the cognitive and affective processes of film spectatorship in light of philosophical accounts of imagination. I argue the cinematic imagination extends well beyond... more
Using Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979) as a case study, this paper investigates the cognitive and affective processes of film spectatorship in light of philosophical accounts of imagination. I argue the cinematic imagination extends well beyond visualisation and I explore how different modes of imagination, including the sonic imagination, work in conjunction with cognition, affect, and perception. I analyse the ways in which experiential, affective forms of imagination produce affective resonance with screen characters and immerse the audience in the mood of the film, and synaesthetic imaginative processes involve translating sound and image into touch, affect, and empathy to generate understanding on different levels.
Research Interests:
The crucial role of the cerebellum in motor learning and coordination is very well known. Considerable interest has recently shifted toward its contribution to non-motor tasks, such as working memory, emotion and language. However, the... more
The crucial role of the cerebellum in motor learning and coordination is very well known. Considerable interest has recently shifted toward its contribution to non-motor tasks, such as working memory, emotion and language. However, the cognitive role and functional subdivisions of the cerebellum, particularly in dynamic, ecologically realistic contexts, are not yet established. By analysing functional neuroimaging data acquired while participants viewed a short dramatic movie, we found that posterior and inferior cerebellar regions are reliably engaged in dynamic perceptual and affective processes with no explicit motor component. These cerebellar regions show significant relevance to visual salience and unexpected turning points of the movie, as well as robust, dynamic functional connectivity with prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Our results demonstrate that distinct functional subdivisions of the cerebellum are robustly engaged in real-life cognitive processes, playing specific roles through a dynamic interaction with higher order regions in the cerebral cortex.
Research Interests:
This article sets up a neurophenomenological approach to understanding cinema spectatorship in order to investigate how embodied engagement with technologies of sound and motion can foster a sense of experiential realism. It takes as a... more
This article sets up a neurophenomenological approach to understanding cinema spectatorship in order to investigate how embodied engagement with technologies of sound and motion can foster a sense of experiential realism. It takes as a starting point the idea that the empirical study of emotive, perceptual, motor, and cognitive processes involved in film spectatorship is impoverished without a phenomenological account of the lived experience under investigation. Correspondingly, engaging with neuroscientific studies enriches the scope of phenomenological inquiry and offers new insights into the film experience. Analysis of diverse films including Interstellar, Leviathan, San Andreas and The Thin Red Line reveals how technological innovations dating from Hale’s Tours (pre-1910) to contemporary D-BOX and Dolby Atmos systems have enhanced the audience’s sense of immersion and corporeal investment in the film experience. Building on the research of Vivian Sobchack and Vittorio Gallese, I argue that aesthetic techniques including the use of low frequency sound effects and wearable cameras facilitate shared affective engagement and a form of embodied simulation associated with kinaesthetic empathy and augmented narrative involvement.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Drawing on cinematic theories of sound, and neuroscientific understandings of the eye and the gaze, we undertake a comparative analysis of two film sequences: the 'chase sequence' from the animated film, Monsters, Inc. (Docter et al.... more
Drawing on cinematic theories of sound, and neuroscientific understandings of the eye and the gaze, we undertake a comparative analysis of two film sequences: the 'chase sequence' from the animated film, Monsters, Inc. (Docter et al. 2001), and the first five minutes of the Omaha Beach landing scene from Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998). Both films involve complex sound design, moments of perceptual shock, spatial and temporal shifts in sound, and heightened sonic agency. Six viewers were eye tracked, and the data analyzed through a combination of close textual analysis and the statistical interpretation of aggregate gaze patterns. The viewers were shown these sequences twice: once with its normal audio field playing, and once with the sound taken out. In this chapter we interpret this data to answer the following questions: to what extent do viewers' eyes follow narrative-based sound cues? How does the soundtrack affect viewer engagement and attention to detail? Is there an element of prediction and predictability in the way a viewer sees and hears? Do viewers' eyes 'wander' when there is no sound to guide them where to look? Ultimately, we ask how important is sound to the cinematic experience of vision? 5-10
Research Interests:
This essay seeks to critically conceptualize the term geocultural space and the emerging field of study with which it is associated by exploring the various ways in which such space is currently being mapped by researchers using digital... more
This essay seeks to critically conceptualize the term geocultural space and the emerging field of study with which it is associated by exploring the various ways in which such space is currently being mapped by researchers using digital humanities tools and methods. In drawing together intersecting interests in Geographic Information Systems and spatio-cultural narratives and experiences, this work defines an interdisciplinary field of research that is gathering momentum as geolocative technologies that shape and reshape the ways in which we perceive and experience the world become increasingly prevalent in academic life and in the cultural mainstream. Since the " spatial turn " 1 in cultural theory in the late 1980s, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Geographic Information Science are no longer the preserve of geography departments; rather, digital mapping projects exist within such otherwise disparate disciplines as literary and cultural studies, history, health sciences, media studies and marine biology, to name just a few. Many of these projects are either using digital mapping tools to engage with notions of geocultural space or are creating digital artefacts that have implications for the ways in which geographic and environmental spaces are culturally understood. Although researchers undertaking digital mapping may be based in institutes and faculties between which there is little opportunity for dialogue or sharing ideas and techniques, GIS arguably establishes a bridge between research in the sciences and the humanities. Interdisciplinary research of this nature rests not only on shared research methods, it also necessitates thinking through the implications of such work in terms of what geocultural space is and how it may be conceptualized.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Available online at Screening the Past: http://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-37-aesthetic-issues-in-world-cinema/affectless-empathy-embodied-imagination-and-the-killer-inside-me/
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Available online at Screening the Past:
http://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-34-first-release/mapping-the-cinematic-journey-of-alexander-pearce-cannibal-convict/
http://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-34-first-release/mapping-the-cinematic-journey-of-alexander-pearce-cannibal-convict/