Culture and Creativity Research Institute

This paper explores the intertextual approach used by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson during the adaptation process of The Shining (1980). The exploration is approached through new analysis of pre-production documents relating to The Shining from the Stanley Kubrick Archive and the Diane Johnson Archive. Notes and comments on many books and authors related to the research and development of the film can be found. Archive interviews with Stanley Kubrick and a new interview by the author with Diane Johnson link together these fragments and give further insights into the writing process and its relevance to the adaptation. A new analysis of the films intertextual engagement is offered by examining the wide range of literature referenced during the adaptation process: works from the early psychoanalytic movement, Gothic novels about obsession and loss, books exploring the lives of loners and outsiders, and theoretical texts on ghost stories, fairytales, and classical tragedy. I assess how this new evidence affects our understanding of the film, the filmmaker’s intentions and the wider understanding of the adaptation process and its relationship to the adapted cultural product.

My research focusses on decentering narratives from the Stanley Kubrick Archive (SKA) to challenge the hegemonic white, heterosexual, cis gendered male centric history of film production. I am considering how intersectional methods, defined by Kimberly Crenshaw (1989) can be used to recover marginalised voices from within the SKA and to explore these stories. By seeking out the histories of women, LGBTQ+ people and people of colour, the process of decentering the history contained within the archive can begin.

Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) was an American film producer and director who made many of his blockbuster films in the UK, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Shining (1980) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). The SKA, housed in the Archives and Special Collections Centre at University of Arts London, exists as a record of the development and production of his films, made and unmade, with material spanning his entire career from the 1940s to the 2000s, beyond his death in 1999. The SKA is a monolithic monument to Stanley Kubrick.

However, within this “identity archive” are documents and work created by other contributors. People such as Joy Cuff, who built the moon models for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Chris Baker, who produced concept drawings for Eyes Wide Shut, Wendy Carlos who composed the memorable score for The Shining, and Arthur Jafa who took hundreds of photographs of New York streets for the preproduction of Eyes Wide Shut. Evidence of their work is housed in the SKA, often unattributed and unseen. These examples, and many others, demonstrate ‘below the line workers’ who were employed because of their skills and expertise. They worked with the director’s vision in mind, but creatively expressed themselves and developed their careers before, through and beyond their work with Stanley Kubrick. 
   
My aim is to research and repurpose narratives from marginalised voices within the SKA, looking mainly at these below the line film workers.

My main objectives are:
1. To use the Stanley Kubrick Archive to uncover the histories of marginalised people who contributed creative labour to films directed by Stanley Kubrick
2. To collect, preserve and investigate the histories of under-represented people in the UK film industry
3. To challenge the hegemonic auteur-based history of film production by highlighting the hidden labour and collaborative practices of filmmaking 
                                                                               
This original contribution to knowledge will impact the narrative of Kubrick studies and film studies more widely. It will contribute to a developing paradigm shift in the teaching of film history and production studies making it more accessible and inclusive. This work also presents an example of ways that researchers and archivists can work together to address gaps and silences in identity archives, to challenge dominant narratives and to present multiple ways of viewing the past. It is my hope that this learning will allow the film workers of the future to see themselves in film history and that it will empower them to address the inequalities that still exist and begin to redress the balance of the dominant historical narrative.

The antonymous relationship between fact and fiction is prevalent throughout archaeological discourse; with issues of authenticity leading notions of value and form,  from whose authority such decisions are attributed being of intrinsic concern within the narrative voice. This heuristic praxis is never more apparent than within the resurgent discipline of geomythology. Standing upon over two and a half thousand years’ worth of related inquiry it still remains a nascent factor in today’s scholastic community due to its recent rebranding,  predominantly having become catagorised within geoscience and having acquired an orthodoxy to suit. This thesis examines the geomythological path that has led to such an approach, positing a proof of concept methodology that seeks to address the inherent challenges this faces within current theoretical schemata. 
This methodology is then applied to a case study, linking aspects of the Second Branch of Y Mabinogi with Cardigan Bay based upon a deep map of the myth cycle. It examines three mythical inclusions and considers their scientific viability before postulating how best to express this information in the future via a transdisciplinary form of archaeological representation.

Abstract for a symposium on Storymaking by The Liverpool Screen School in collaboration with the ICC (Institute of Cultural Capital) and supported by the MeCCSA Practice Network. November 11th, at Liverpool John Moore's University.
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For: the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) & Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA), May 2017.

Deep Mapping Belief

"A deep map is not a thin map… It is a folding of representations akin to the relationship between a "thick" and a "thin" description… it creates a pattern of social and cultural communication, connections which go beyond any single account." (Kavanagh, 2017, forthcoming)

The dissemination of knowledge is frequently weighted either side of an emic and etic divide. Stories, psychism and spirit stand across from science, with contesting notions of truth value stirring the normativity in-between. This paper posits an alternative approach, which has been developed within an interdisciplinary framework to challenge the conventions of geo-mythological narrative along the coast of Cardigan Bay, in West Wales. It applies the concept of 'deep mapping' as ethnographic practice in order to integrate differing epistemological world views without any loss of individual authority. In this way, semantic density may be retained in an ethically transparent manner and multimodal interpretations are afforded the space to speak with equal voice, creating a polyphony of belief.

For: The British Association of the Study of Religions conference on 'Narratives of Religion' at the University of Chester, September 4-6th 2017.

On Wednesday 27th November, 2002, sheltering from a torrential downpour worthy of Gilgamesh, the Temple of Peace in Cardiff held an unusual gathering. This gathering was the opening ceremony for what became an international, multi award winning, charity for global citizenship. It was a statement of faith, of inter faith, where contesting religious narratives laid down their differences and stood side by side. 

This paper presents the teaching methodology which has resulted from that day, offering an auto-ethnographical account (Ellis et al, 2010) of what it has been like building rainbows across the ontological turn. To be one small part of both the process, and the product. In so doing, it travels in the light of Paulo Friere’s work on democracy and hope (1994), presenting a framework for encouraging social evolution through the simple symbol of a mala.

In these times of increasing unrest, the need to pick up Paulo Freire’s challenge to seek democracy through education (1973), has never been greater. Elucidating constructions of religion has become a demanding role for many people who would not ordinarily consider themselves to be spiritually informed, whether in or outside of the classroom. From tackling alternative facts in social media to dodging bombs as we wait for our children at a pop concert, “the voices of intolerance are all around us – the voice of tolerance needs to be louder” (Pam Evans, www.peacemala.org).


Ellis. C., Adams T. and Bochner A. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research 36(4): 273–90.
Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York, Seabury Press.
Freire, P. and A.M.A. Freire (1994). Pedagogy of hope: reliving Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, Continuum.

For Progressive Connexions’ Interdisciplinary Conference on Sprituality....and Culture, Lisbon, 17th & 18th March 2018.

Nestled within the  CFP shone the following incipit: “Other forms of participation…” - which reads rather like an invitation to innovate. I am therefore proposing an alternative mode of engaging with your conference – an engagement via drawing portraits and poetry. The former will be of the speakers as they are speaking, thus not their resting faces but their performative ones.  The latter will be variants upon the modern haiku or tanka, summing up what I have, personally, taken away from the presentations in tweetable bite sizes. This cultural amalgamation of Japanese and English poetic form will allow for rapid, immediate impressions; aiming to compliment the more considered and extended responses that usually follow sessions.

Additionally, cross out poems will be created from the submitted abstracts in advance, which reduces the delegates proposals into their apparent core components; extracting the breath of ideas and drawing between the lines.

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TAG '17 Cardiff, Session: (S-ite)rations: Memory, Forgetting and the Temporal Architecture of Place."

If different processes and phenomena become apparent at different scales of observation, there can be no single unified history…only a multi-scalar [one] written from many different points of view. " (1)

Presenting a nuanced narrative that resolves such ontological divides is often the task of heritage practitioners – but what happens when public practice overrides all offerings from empirical observation? When emergent waves of tangible data and expert opinion are deliberately rejected in the resilient maintenance of an ideological appropriation of place and time? This paper comments on just such a dilemma, using the Welsh Government initiative 'Year of Legends' (2) as a case study. Where local identity has been founded upon a reuse of the 'past within the past' (3) and socially situated memory is reliant upon an active process of forgetting.

(1) Bailey, G, Holdaway, S (ed.) & Wandsnider, L (ed.) 2008, Time perspectivism: origins and consequences. in Time in Archaeology: Time Perspectivism Revisited. Utah University Press, Utah, pp. 13-30.
(2) http://gov.wales/newsroom/culture-tourism-sport/2017/170301-year-of-legends-2017/?lang=en
(3) Bradley, R., & Williams, H. (1998). The Past in the past: the reuse of ancient monuments. London, Routledge.