Dr Becky Bartlett

Lecturer in Film Exhibition and Curation

  • MSc Film Exhibition and Curation
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
  • Graduate School

Contact details

Address

Street

5.18, 40 George Square

City
Post code

Availability

  • I work Monday to Wednesday and Friday. On these days, you can reach me via email or Teams.
    My office hour is Tuesday 2-3pm.

Biography

Background

Becky joined the MSc Film Exhibition and Curation teaching team in August 2023, having previously worked at several universities across Scotland. She completed her PhD in Film Studies at the University of Glasgow in 2015, and published her first monograph, Badfilm: Incompetence, Intention and Failure, through University of Edinburgh Press in 2021. Her primary research interests relate to failure studies, with a focus on cult film and television. Her book analyses formal characteristics of incompetence in the 'worst films of all time', with chapters offering close textual analysis of sound, editing, performance and recycled footage. Through this, she considers intentionality in relation to failure, and addresses issues of authorship, taste and value, as well as historical, cultural and reception contexts. 

As well as developing her work on failure in relation to exhibition, distribution and global screen cultures, Becky is currently investigating the intersections between trash cinema and the environmental humanities, with a focus on recycling, garbology and waste studies. Her other research interests include religion and screen media, particularly the intersections between cinema and marginalised religious communities around the world, and animals onscreen. 

Prior to receiving her PhD, Becky was a supervisor at one of the busiest cinemas in the UK and worked as a freelance film journalist, writing for publications including The Skinny and FrightFest.

Postgraduate teaching

Becky currently teaches on the MSc in Film Exhibition and Curation.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

No

Research summary

Becky's research interests include: 

  • Cult film and television
  • Failure studies
  • Badfilm
  • Ecocinema
  • Fan studies, reception studies and taste cultures
  • Film and television aesthetics
  • Film and world religions
  • Animals onscreen

Invited speaker

  • Bad ecocinema: Rubbish, garbage and trash films. Speaker's series, University of St Andrews, April 2021
  • Hey hey, we're not monkeys: Gorilla men in the movies. Northumbria University, December 2019
  • Separation of church and cinema?: Interpretation and adaptation in Noah, the 'least biblical biblical movie ever made'. Screen series, University of Glasgow, November 2016

In the press

  • Interviewee, 'What cult classics can teach us about art, representation and failure', Ideas, CBC Radio (Canada), May 2020
  • Guest speaker, Access Film Club at Glasgow Film Theatre, September 2017
  • Panelist, Patsies! Presented by Physical Impossibility, Glasgow Film Festival 2017
  • Panelist, Physical Impossibility presents Bad Romance, Glasgow Film Festival 2016 

  • Badfilm: Incompetence, Intention and Failure. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021
  • "Controversy and the 'culture war': Exploring tensions between the sacred and the secular in Noah, the 'least biblical biblical movie ever'" in Wickham Clayton (ed), The Bible Onscreen in the New Millennium: New Heart and New Spirit. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, pp143-160
  • "Madman, genius, hack, auteur?: Intertextuality and extratextuality in 'Ed Wood films' after Plan 9 From Outer Space". Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 33: 6, 2019
  • "'It happens by accident': Failed intentions, incompetence and sincerity in badfilm" in Jamie Sexton & Ernest Mathijs (eds), Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema. London, New York: Routledge, 2019, pp40-50
  • "The worst movies of all time". Media Education Journal, 65, 2019, pp24-28
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