Dr Sarah Churchwell

Senior Lecturer in American Literature & Culture, University of East Anglia

Sarah Churchwell's research expertise and teaching experience are in 20th century and contemporary American literature and culture; American film history and theory, gender theory; cultural studies and popular culture; life-writing and literary theory. Her principal interests involve questions of literature, film, cultural value and gender, including the relationship of literature to canon formation, representations of women, feminism, film and visual media; popular culture and the history of popular literature; biography and life-writing; serial fiction and print media; reception histories and the role of audiences/readers; and popular intellectualism.

Dr Churchwell writes regularly for the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times Book Review, and the TLS, and has a regular monthly column on popular film for Psychologies magazine. Her work has also appeared in publications including: the Independant on Sunday, the Observer, the Times, the New Statesman, the Spectator, the Liberal, the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Pop magazine, De Morgen (Brussels), Qvest (Germany), the Seattle Post/Intelligencer, the Kuwait Times and the Hindu Times, among others.
 
In 2009, she was one of the judges of the Orange Prize for Fiction. In the autumn of 2009 she will be appearing at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, and at the Tate Modern discussing the work of David Lynch. She is a regular panelist on Newsnight Review (BBC2); other television appearances include This Week (BBC1), The Cinema Show (BBC4), The DVD Collection (BBC4), Death by Excess (SkyOne), The Sharp End with Clive Anderson (BBC2), The Last Word (More4) , Before the Booker (BBC4), and various film documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, SkyOne, on topics such as Marilyn Monroe, the Boston Strangler, film icons, and classic films. Most recently she appeared on Arena’s TS Eliot (BBC2) and The Rules of Film Noir (BBC4). Radio appearances include Any Questions, Front Row, Woman's Hour, the Jeremy Vine show, Radio Five Live, and various regional radio programmes. Most recently she has written and narrated a documentary for Radio 4 on the 20th anniversary of When Harry Met Sally.