Dr Simon Brown

About

I am associate professor of Film and Television and joined Kingston University in 2004 after spending a decade at the BFI National Film and Television Archive, sourcing and restoring old films. From that work came my love of film history, and also my PHD which was on the early years of the British film industry. Over the course of my career, I've written about and taught a range of Film, TV and Media related subjects such as Film History and Technology, National Cinemas including Britain, China and Hong Kong, Cult Film and Television, Horror, Censorship, Documentary and the History of Non-Fiction Film, Archiving and the Media Industry as well as Contemporary American Film and Television. I'm also the first-year tutor for Film and much of my teaching in recent years has focused on providing support for our new incoming students.

Academic responsibilities

Associate professor

Teaching and learning

Postgraduate courses taught

Research

My main areas of research are around film and television history and technology, genre, and adaptation. I have written extensively on various aspects of film and TV history, including the development of colour cinematography up to the arrival of Technicolor in the 1930s, the rise and fall of 3D television, and in particular the development of the film industry in the UK from its beginnings in 1895 through to the First World War. MY particular focus in this area was the pioneer filmmaker Cecil Hepworth, who was based close to Kingston in Walton on Thames. My recent film research has revolved around the horror genre and adaptation, focussing mainly on films adapted from the written works of Stephen King. In terms of TV, I have written extensively about cult tv shows such as Dexter, The X-Files, Under the Dome, and about cult networks like Showtime and Fox. 

Research student supervision

Main supervision

Other supervision

Publications

Number of items: 36.

Article

Brown, Simon (2017) Adapting Stephen King : text, context and the case of 'Cell' (2016). Pennywise Dreadful, 1(1), pp. 42-56.

Brown, Simon (2017) Stephen King's Vampire Kingdom : Supernatural EVIL and Human evil in TV adaptations of Salem's Lot (1979, 2004). Horror Studies, 8(2), p. 223. ISSN (print) 2040-3275

Brown, Simon (2017) Alternate version of the same reality : adapting Under the Dome as a SF TV series. Science Fiction Film and Television, 10(2), pp. 267-283. ISSN (print) 1754-3770

Brown, Simon (2013) From novelty to normal: 3DTV as special effect. Critical Studies in Television, 8(3), pp. 33-46. ISSN (print) 1749-6020

Brown, Simon (2013) From inventor to renter: the middleman, the production crisis and the formation of the British film industry. Early Popular Visual Culture, 11(2), pp. 100-112. ISSN (print) 1746-0654

Brown, Simon (2013) Memento mori: The slow death of The X-Files. Science Fiction Film and Television, 6(1), pp. 7-22. ISSN (print) 1754-3770

Brown, Simon (2011) Anywhere but Scotland? Transnationalism and new Scottish cinema. International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen, 4(1), ISSN (online) 2046-5602

Brown, Simon (2009) Book Review of: The mass image: a social history of photomechanical reproduction in Victorian London by Gerry Beegan. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 6(1), pp. 141-143. ISSN (print) 1743-4521

Brown, Simon (2009) Colouring the nation: spectacle, reality and British natural colour in the silent and early sound era. Film History: an International Journal, 21(2), pp. 139-149. ISSN (print) 0892-2160

Brown, Simon (2007) Flicker alley: Cecil Court and the emergence of the British film industry. Film Studies, 10, pp. 21-33. ISSN (print) 1469-0314

Brown, Simon (2005) Coming soon to a hall near you: some notes on 16mm road-show distribution in the 1930s. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 2(2), pp. 299-309. ISSN (print) 1743-4521

Brown, Simon (2005) Early cinema in Britain and the smoking concert film. Early Popular Visual Culture, 3(2), pp. 165-178. ISSN (print) 1746-0654

Brown, S. (2003) The greatest documentary ever made?: James Cameron's Titanic. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: a journal of criticism and theory, 5(1), pp. 78-88. ISSN (print) 1524-8429

Book

Brown, Simon (2019) Creepshow. Leighton Buzzard : Auteur Press. (Devil's Advocate) ISBN 9781911325918

Brown, Simon (2019) Creepshow. Leighton Buzzard : Auteur Publishing. 106p. (Devil's Advocates) ISBN 9781911325918

Brown, Simon (2018) Screening Stephen King : adaptation and the horror genre in film and television. Austin, U.S. : University of Texas Press. 240p. ISBN 9781477314920

Brown, Simon (2016) Cecil Hepworth and the rise of the British film industry 1899-1911. Exeter, U.K. : University of Exeter Press. 256p. (Exeter studies in film history) ISBN 9780859898904

Brown, Simon , Street, Sarah and Watkins, Liz, eds. (2013) British colour cinema : practices and theories. London, U.K. : British Film Institute. 280p. ISBN 9781844574148

Abbott, Stacey and Brown, Simon, eds. (2007) Investigating Alias: secrets and spies. London, U.K. : I. B. Tauris. 238p. (Investigating cult TV) ISBN 9781845114053

Book Section

Brown, Simon (2023) Stephen King and vampires. In: Bacon, Simon, (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. London, U.K. : Palgrave McMillan Cham. (Epub Ahead of Print)

Abbott, Stacey and Brown, Simon (2021) Gothic and silent cinema. In: Spooner, Catherine and Townshend, Dale, (eds.) Gothic in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press. pp. 22-42. (The Cambridge History of the Gothic, 3) ISBN 9781108624268

Brown, Simon (2019) Remaking Stephen King : texts and contexts. In: Piatti-Farnell, Lorna, (ed.) Gothic afterlives : reincarnations of horror in film and television. Lanham, Maryland, U.S. : Lexington Books. (In Press)

Brown, Simon and Abbott, Stacey (2019) Inspiration as adaptation : TV horror, seriality and the adapted text. In: Kaklamanidoy, Betty, (ed.) Adaptation 4.0 : a state of polymorphia. Detroit, U.S. : Wayne State University Press. (In Press)

Brown, Simon (2019) Stephen King’s Full Dark No Stars (2010) – Stephen King. In: Bacon, Simon, (ed.) Horror: a Companion. Oxford : Peter Lang. pp. 235-240. ISBN 9781787079199

Brown, Simon (2012) The Brighton School and the quest for natural color – redux. In: Brown, Simon , Street, Sarah and Watkins, Liz, (eds.) Color and the moving image: history, theory, aesthetics, archive. Oxford, U.K. : Routledge. pp. 13-22. (AFI Film Readers) ISBN 9780415892643

Brown, Simon (2012) Censorship under siege : the BBFC in the silent era. In: Lamberti, Edward, (ed.) Behind the scenes at the BBFC : film classification from the silver screen to the digital age. London, U.K. : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 3-14. ISBN 9781844574766

Brown, Simon (2011) Renegades and Wayward Sons : Supernatural and the '70s. In: Abbott, Stacey and Lavery, David, (eds.) TV Goes to Hell: An Unofficial Road Map of Supernatural. Toronto, Canada : ECW Press. pp. 60-74. ISBN 9781770410206

Brown, Simon (2010) Cult channels: Showtime, FX and Cult TV. In: Abbott, Stacey, (ed.) The cult TV book. London, U.K. : I.B. Tauris. pp. 155-162. (Investigating Cult TV) ISBN 9781848850262

Brown, Simon (2010) Case Study: the X-Files. In: Abbott, Stacey, (ed.) The cult TV book. London, U.K. : I.B. Tauris. pp. 163-166. (Investigating Cult TV) ISBN 9781848850262

Brown, Simon and Abbott, Stacey (2010) The art of sp(l)atter: body horror in Dexter. In: Howard, Douglas L., (ed.) Dexter: Investigating Cutting Edge Television. London, U.K. : I.B. Tauris. pp. 205-220. (Investigating Cult TV) ISBN 9781848852655

Brown, Simon and Abbott, Stacey (2007) Can't live with 'em, can shoot 'em: Alias and the (thermo) nuclear family. In: Abbott, Stacey and Brown, Simon, (eds.) Investigating Alias: secrets and spies. London, U.K. : I. B. Tauris. pp. 87-100. (Investigating cult TV) ISBN 9781845114053

Brown, Simon and Abbott, Stacey (2007) Introduction: 'serious spy stuff': the cult pleasures of Alias. In: Abbott, Stacey and Brown, Simon, (eds.) Investigating Alias: secrets and spies. London, U.K. : I. B. Tauris. pp. 1-8. (Investigating cult TV) ISBN 9781845114053

Brown, Simon (2007) Narrative and pictorialism in post-pioneer Hepworth films. In: Porter, Laraine and Dixon, Bryony, (eds.) Picture Perfect: Landscape, Place and Travel in British Cinema before 1930. Exeter, U.K. : The Exeter Press. pp. 29-36. ISBN 9781905816019

Conference or Workshop Item

Brown, Simon (2015) An American werewolf in America : Stephen King's 'Cycle of the werewolf' and 'Silver bullet'. In: Open graves, open minds : The company of wolves : Sociality, animality, and subjectivity in literary and cultural narratives - werewolves, shapeshifters, and feral humans; 03 - 05 Sep 2015, Hatfield, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Brown, Simon [Speaker] (2008) Blanche MacIntosh: first lady of screen crime. In: Rats, Rascals and Ruffians: the Globalisation of Crime and the British Silent Film : 11th British Silent Cinema Festival; 03 - 06 Apr 2008, Nottingham, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Brown, Simon [Speaker] (2004) World War I & the British horror film. In: ‘Goodbye to all that’ British Silent Cinema and World War I; 05-19 Apr 2004, Nottingham, U.K.. (Unpublished)

This list was generated on Wed Sep 13 06:57:28 2023 BST.