Dr Daniel Varndell

Biography

Since joining Winchester in 2008, I have taught a wide variety of modules across the English Literature, Film, and American Studies programmes. I was programme leader for the BA (Hons) English Literature programmes between 2015 and 2019 and wrote the MA English Literature programme.  I specialise in twentieth-century and contemporary English literature and film, with a focus on acting and performance, memory, and the ethics of torture. I currently teach undergraduate modules on World Literature, Modernism and Postmodernism, Critical Theory, Literary Adaptations and Literature and Psychoanalysis, and sometimes teach postgraduate modules on Adaptation and Performance and Literature and Memory.

My first monograph, Hollywood Remakes, Deleuze and the Grandfather Paradox (2014), was followed by publications on subjects ranging from the existential philosophy of Hal Hartley to the use of colour in relation to memory in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, as well as two essays on great performances - John Barrymore (2017) and Peter Sellers (2018). I have publications on Jaws, the 1970s films of John Frankenheimer, Shane, hidden representations of female Autism Spectrum Disorder onscreen, and a piece for the 2010s volume in the Star Dacades series on Michelle Williams and Jessica Chastain (all forthcoming in 2020-2021). I will also publish my new monograph for SUNY press on Etiquette and Torture in film performance sometime in late 2021, early 2022.

I gained my doctorate in 2010 from the University of Southampton under the supervision of Professor Linda Ruth Williams. I am currently supervising three PhD candidates and welcome any expressions of interest regarding doctoral study, and have supervised on doctoral student to completion.

Areas of expertise

• Contemporary literature and film.
• Film remakes and literary adaptations.
• Adaptation and performance.
• Psychoanalysis and post-structuralism.
• Modernity and postmodernity.
• Theory, text and visual culture.
• Autism Spectrum Disorder.
• Theories of memory and nostalgia.
• Etiquette and the ethics of torture.

Publications

Journal article

• 2017. ‘The Enigma of The White Ribbon’. New Review of Film and Television Studies, Volume 15. Issue 1.

Book chapters in edited collections

• 2018. 'Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther'. Close-Up: Great Cinematic Performances Volume 1: America. Edited by Murray Pomerance and Kyle Stevens.
• 2017. ‘Handling Time: The Passing of Tradition in A Bill of Divorcement’. Hamlet Lives in Hollywood: John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition on Screen. Edited by Steven Rybin and Murray Pomerance.
• 2017. ‘A New Man: The Logic of the Break in Hal Hartley’s Amateur’. The Cinema of Hal Hartley: Flirting with Formalism. Edited by Steven Rybin.

Monographs

• 2023. Torturous Etiquettes: Film Performance and Social Form. New York: Suny Press.
• 2014. Hollywood Remakes, Deleuze and The Grandfather Paradox. Palgrave Macmillan.