Laura McMahon is a Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies. Her research addresses connections between contemporary film and philosophy, with a particular focus on French and Francophone contexts, combined with an engagement with screen cultures across various other language areas.
Her most recent book, Animal Worlds: Film, Philosophy and Time (Edinburgh University Press 2019), explores a burgeoning interest in the question of the animal in film and philosophy. It brings reflections on the ethics and politics of animal life by thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Nicole Shukin into contact with a range of contemporary international art cinema, particularly experimental documentary, including work by Emmanuel Gras (France), Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel (USA), Denis Côté (Canada) and Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky (Hungary). The focus of the book intersects with ‘Screen Animals ’(2015), a dossier of essays edited for the journal Screen, and with a co-edited collection entitled Animal Life and the Moving Image (BFI 2015), which includes chapters by Raymond Bellour and other leading scholars in the field.
Dr McMahon is currently working on a project on feminist historiography and moving image practice, examining engagements with memory, temporality and the archival in recent film and video work by female filmmakers (including Mati Diop, Alina Marazzi, Basma al Sharif and Regina de Miguel). Dr McMahon’s other research interests include questions of embodiment, materiality and the senses in screen cultures. Her first book, Cinema and Contact: The Withdrawal of Touch in Nancy, Bresson, Duras and Denis (Legenda, 2012), examines dynamics of touch, aesthetics, politics and community via interactions between French cinema and philosophy, drawing in particular on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.
Dr McMahon welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests relevant to her interests.
Gonville and Caius College
Trinity Street
Cambridge
CB2 1TA
Email: lcm31@cam.ac.uk
Tel: 01223 (3) 35062
Published works