Christopher Nolan Studies

An image from Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

Film Studies For Free knows only too well that there's a time and a place for everything. Given that Christopher Nolan's Inception has just premiered to mostly great online acclaim, it is probably the right time and place for a bumper FSFF "Christopher Nolan Studies" entry (despite the fact that FSFF's author won't actually see his new film till the weekend... No spoilers, people!).

Much more than all you need to know about the online discussion of Nolan's latest film is linked to with customary wit and brevity by David Hudson. The below links, then, restrict themselves to online, openly accessible, and (pure-dead-brilliant) scholarly takes on Nolan's film work, and related matters, to date.

• Robert Avery, 'Violence as (Masculinist) Epistemic Rhetoric: the case of Memento', Masters Thesis, University of Maine, August 2004

• Christopher Bodnar, 'The Database, Logic, and Suffering: Memento and Random-Access Information Aesthetics', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 7 No. 10, May 2003

• Holly Lynn Baumgartner, 'Visualizing Levinas: Existence and Existents through Mulholland Drive, Memento, and Vanilla Sky', PhD Thesis, Graduate College of Bowling Green State University, May 2005

• Jay David Bolter, 'Transference and Transparency: Digital Technology and the Remediation of Cinema', Intermédialités, n 6 automne 2005

• David Bordwell, 'Niceties: how classical filmmaking can be at once simple and precise', Observations on Film Art, March 22, 2009

• Matthew Campora, ''Review of Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema, by Allan Cameron, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2008', Senses of Cinema, Issue 55, 2010

• Melissa Clark, 'The Space-Time Image: the Case of Bergson, Deleuze, and Memento', The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2002

• Michael Duffy, 'Batman Begins', Scope, Issue 3, November 2005

• Thomas Elsaesser, 'The Mind-Game Film' in Warren Buckland (ed), Puzzle Films (Oxford: Blackwell 2009)  

• Raoul Eshelman, 'Performatism in the Movies (1997-2003)', Anthropoetics 8, no. 2 (Fall 2002 / Winter 2003)

• Mark Fisher, 'Gothic Oedipus: subjectivity and capitalism in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins', ImageTexT, Vol. 2.2, 2006

• Domènec Font, 'In the Fabric of Time', Formats, No. 5, 2009

• Juan González Etxeberria, "Metamorphosing Words in the Cinema of the Fantastic", Comparative Literature and Culture 10.4 (2008)

• Adrian Gargett, 'Nolan's Memento, Memory, and Recognition', CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 4.3 (2002)

• Matt George, 'On Forgetting Memento', h2so4, 16, 2001

• Richard Grusin, 'Dvds, video games, and the cinema of interactions', Ilha do Desterro A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, Vol. 0, No 51 (2006)

• Davin Heckman, 'Unraveling Identity: Watching the Posthuman Bildungsroman', CTHeory.net, 2008

• Ann Heilmann, 'Doing It With Mirrors: Neo-Victorian Metatextual Magic in Affinity, The Prestige and The Illusionist', Neo-Victorian Studies, 2:2 (Winter 2009/2010) pp. 18-42

• John Ip, 'The Dark Knight's War on Terrorism', Social Science Research Network, May 2010Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Forthcoming) 

• Kathryn Muriel Kang, 'Patch and reboot in Memento', in Agnostic democracy : the decentred "I" of the 1990s, PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 2006 (for full thesis click here)

• Vicki Karaminas, 'Ubermen: Masculinity, Costume, and Meaning in Comic Book Superheroes' in Peter McNeil and Vicki Karaminas (eds), The Men's Fashion Reader, Berg, Oxford and New York, pp. 179-186 

• Vicki Karaminas, “No Capes!” Über Fashion and How “Luck Favours the Prepared”: Constructing Contemporary Superhero Identities in American Popular Culture', International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA), vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 478-508

• Zelda G Knight, 'Monsters and Monstrous Acts: Exploring the Shadow Archetype in Batman: The Dark Knight', Inter-Disciplinary.Net, 7th Global Conference, Oxford 2009

• Lutz Koepnick , 'Photographs and Memories', South Central Review 21.1 (Spring 2004): 94–129

• Jung-In Kwon, 'Memory Simulated', Journal of Moving Image Studies, Vol. 3, 2004

• Randolph Lewis, 'The Dark Knight of American Empire', Jump Cut, No. 51, 2009

• Patrick McEntaggart, 'Once Upon a Paradigm Shift: Interactive Storytelling in a New Media Context', Inter-Disciplinary.Net, 5th Global Conference, Salzburg, March 14, 2010

• Todd McGowan, 'The Exceptional darkness of The Dark Knight', Jump Cut, 51, 2009

• Todd McGowan, 'The Violence of Creation in The Prestige', International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol 1, No 3 (2007)

• Walter Benn Michaels, 'The Death of a Beautiful Woman: Christopher Nolan's Idea of Form', Electronic Book Review, October 2007

• John S. Nelson, 'Realism as a Political Style: Noir Insights', Poroi, 5, 2, November, 2008

• Stanley Orr, 'Connected Guys: The Reconstructed Subject of 1990s Film Noir', in Darkly perfect world : colonial adventure, postmodernism, and American noir (Ohio State University, 2010) scroll down in PDF to p. 198 

• Kimberly Ann Owczarski, 'Batman, Time Warner, and Franchise Filmmaking in the Conglomerate Era', PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2008

• Chris Pallant , 'Review: Mark T. Conrad, ed. (2007) The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

• Brock Poulin, 'Dark time (s): non-linear narratives in the postmodern film noir', Masters Thesis, University of British Columbia, April 2005 

• Karen Renner, 'Repeat Viewings Revisited: Emotions, Memory, and Memento', Film Studies, Issue 8, Summer 2006

• Thomas Riegler, 'The “Mastermind”: Personifications of Evil in the Cinema', Inter-Disciplinary.Net, 10th Global Conference, Salzburg, March 2009

• Torben Schmidt, 'Christopher Nolan’s Memento – Analysis of the narrative structure of a noirish revenge film', Seminar: “Decadence and Modernism in Late 20th Century American Cinema, 2003

• Ilana Shiloh, 'Adaptation, Intertextuality, and the Endless Deferral of Meaning: Memento', M/C Journal, Vol. 10, Issue 2, May 2007

• Giovanni Tiso, 'Impossible Recollections: the Troubled Imaginary of Mediated Memory', PhD Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2006

• Gary Westfahl, 'Magnificent Obsessions: A Review of The Dark Knight', Locus Online, July 28, 2008

• Gary Westfahl, 'Nolan’s Labyrinth: A Review of Inception', Locus Online, July 18, 2010