Dr Mikel Koven

Senior Lecturer & Course Leader in Film Studies

Institute of Humanities & Creative Arts

Contact Details

email: m.koven@worc.ac.uk

tel: 01905 85 5297

Mikel Koven’s teaching and research interests range widely. He is the author of Blaxploitation Film (2010), Film, Folklore & Urban Legends (2008) and La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film (2006); co-editor of Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Entertainment (2007) and a special issue of Western Folklore on the topic of “Folklore & Film”. He is currently the editor of the journal Contemporary Legend, but will be shortly giving up that post to take over as President of the International Society of Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR). He is currently working on an edited volume entitled Global Mythologies and World Cinemas, as well as contributing research to collections on the television shows True Blood and Supernatural. In addition to folklore, horror cinema and exploitation films, he has researched cult movies, Jewishness in film and TV, representations of the Holocaust, and fandom.

He teaches a broad range of modules including Introduction to Film Studies, National Cinema, Film Genre and American Popular Television, and is also responsible for specialist modules in Cult & Exploitation Cinema and Film & Folklore.

Qualifications
PhD Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, 1999

Thesis: An Ethnography of Seeing: A Proposed Methodology for the Ethnographic Study of Popular Cinema.

M.A Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick, 1994

Thesis: How Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema Defines the Human Through the Tension Between Rhetorical and Interpellated Discourses as Exemplified in the Alien Trilogy.

Honours BA (with Honours), Humanities (Classics), York University, Toronto, 1992

Thesis: Transformation of Myth through Media: The Mythic Vision of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

 

Teaching & Research

 

 

Professional Bodies

International Society of Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR), 1996 – present

The American Folklore Society (AFS), 1996 – present

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA), 1997 – present

Screen Studies Association, 2000 – present

The Folklore Society (UK), 2000 – present

Folklore Studies Association of Canada (FSAC)/L'Association canadienne d'ethnologie et de folklore (ACEF), 1995 – 1999

Film Studies Association of Canada (F-SAC)/Association canadienne des études cinématographiques (ACÉC), 1995 – 1999

 

Publications

“’A Fairy?! How lame is that?!’: True Blood as Fairy Tale” in Brigid Cherry, ed. True Blood: Investigating Southern Gothic. London: I. B. Tauris, 2012 (forthcoming)

“Televisual Folklore: Rescuing Supernatural from the Fakelore Realm” (with Gunnella Thorgeirsdottir), in David Lavery & Stacey Abbott, eds. Supernatural: TV Goes to Hell. Toronto: ECW Press, 2011 (forthcoming)

Blaxploitation Films (Kamera Books, 2010)

“The Jewish Giallo, or What’s a Nice Jewish Motif Like You Doing in a Movie Like This?” In M. Waligórska and S. Wagenhofer eds. Cultural Representations of Jewishness at the Turn of the 21st Century. Florence: EUI Working Papers, 2010: 135-146

“The X-Files” in David Lavery ed. The Essential Cult Film Reader. University Press of Kentucky, 2010: 337-344

Film, Folklore and Urban Legends, (Scarecrow Press, 2008)

“Coding within Jewish Cultural Studies and Jewish-American Cinema” in Simon Bronner ed. Jewish Cultural Studies, vol. 1. Oxford: Littman, 2008: 291-310

“The Folklore of the Zombie Film” in Marc Leverette and Shawn McIntosh eds. Zombie Culture: Studies of the Monster That Won’t Go Away. Scarecrow Press, 2008: 19-34

“The Folklore Fallacy: A Folkloristic/Filmic Perspective on The Wicker Man” Fabula 48.3-4 (2007)

“Most Haunted and the convergence of traditional belief and popular television”. Folklore 118 (August, 2007): 183-202

Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film and Vernacular Culture (co-edited with Sharon Sherman) (Utah State University Press, 2007)

Co-editor, with Sharon Sherman special issue: “Film and Folklore”, Western Folklore 64, 3-4 (2005)

Editor, special issue: “Cool Jewz: Contemporary Jewish Identity in Popular Culture” Shofar, 25.4 (Summer 2007)

“Adapting Legends: Urban Legends and their Adaptation in Horror Cinema” in Richard Hand and Jay McRoy eds. Monstrous Adaptations: Generic and Thematic Mutations in Horror Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007:157-171

“The Folklore Files: In(corp)orating Legends in The X-Files” in Sharon Yang, The X-Files and Literature: Unweaving the Story, Unraveling the Lie to Find the Truth, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007: 91-104

“Buttgereit’s Poetics: Schramm as Cinema of Poetry” in Steffen Hanke ed. Caligari’s Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007. 185-187

La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film (Scarecrow Press, 2006)

“Space & Place in Italian Giallo Cinema: the ambivalence of modernity” in Wendy Everett & Axel Goodbody eds. Revisiting Space: Space and Place in European Cinema. Bern: Peter Lang, 2005: 115-131

“Folklore Studies and Popular Film and Television: A Necessary Critical Survey”. Journal of American Folklore 116.2 (2003): 176-195

‘”Have I Got a Monster for You!”: Some Thoughts on the Golem, The X-Files and the Jewish Horror Movie’ Folklore 111.2(2000): 217-230

‘Candyman Can: Film and ostension.’ Contemporary Legend N.S. 2 (1999): 137-154

‘Feminist Folkloristics and Women’s Cinema: Towards a Methodology’. Literature Film Quarterly 27.4 (1999): 292-300

‘”You Don’t Have to be Filmish”: The Toronto Jewish Film Festival’. Ethnologies 21.1 (1999): 115-132

 

External Responsibilities

1st Vice President (President Elect), International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR), 2011-2014

Editor, Contemporary Legend (ISCLR). 2006-2011

Membership Secretary, International Society of Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR), 2002 – 2008

Committee Member, The Folklore Society, 2005 – present