Associate Professor in Film & Television Studies

Head of Department

Contact Details

Department of Film and Television Studies
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL UK

Tel: +44 24 7652 4645
Fax:+44 24 7652 4757
Email: J.W.Burrows@warwick.ac.uk

Research Profile

Jon Burrows' major research interests lie in the field of silent cinema, with a particular focus on early British cinema. He has recently published a book about the employment of famous theatre stars in British cinema of the 1910s, and is currently working on a research project examining how cinema was transformed into a mass medium in Britain during the Edwardian era. He is interested in supervising PhDs which look at any aspect of European or American cinema in the silent era, and also any projects which focus upon issues relating to film exhibition and distribution, industry politics and economics, or the aesthetic consequences of technological innovation in British or American cinema, from the 1890s to the present day.

Publications include:

• Legitimate Cinema: Theatre Stars in Silent British Films, 1908-1918 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2003).
• 'The Art of Not "Playing to Pictures" in British Cinemas, 1906-1914' in Julie Brown and Annette Davison (eds), The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2011).
  
• '"She Had So Many Appearances": Alphonse Courlander and the Birth of the "Moving Picture Girl", in Andrew Shail (ed.), Reading the Cinematograph: The 'Kinema' in Short Fiction, 1895-1914 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, forthcoming 2011).
• 'West is Best; or What We Can Learn from Bournemouth', Early Popular Visual Culture, 8:4 (November 2010), pp. 351-362.
  
• 'Near Broke But No Tramp: Billie Ritchie, Charlie Chaplin and "That Costume"', Early Popular Visual Culture, 8:3 (August 2010), pp. 247-262.
• (co-authored with Richard Brown) 'Financing the Edwardian Cinema Boom, 1909-1914', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 30:1 (March 2010), pp. 1-20.
  
• '"A Vague Chinese Quarter Elsewhere": Limehouse in the Cinema 1914-36', Journal of British Cinema and Television, 6:2 (Summer 2009), pp. 282-301.
  
• 'When Britain Tried to Join Europe: The Significance of the 1909 Paris Congress for the British Film Industry', Early Popular Visual Culture, 4:1 (April 2006).
• '"Melodrama of the Dear Old Kind": Sentimentalising British Action Heroines in the 1910s', Film History, 18:2 (Summer 2006).
• 'The First Purpose-Built Cinema: The Case Against Colne', Picture House, 30 (2005), pp. 40-45.
• 'Penny Pleasures: Film exhibition in London during the Nickelodeon era, 1906-1914', Film History, 16:1 (Spring 2004), pp. 60-91.
• 'Penny Pleasures II: Indecency, anarchy and junk film in London's 'Nickelodeons', 1906-1914', Film History, 16:2 (Summer 2004), pp. 172-197.
• 'Waller Jeffs' Scrapbook', Picture House, 29 (2004), pp. 44-55.
• 'Girls on Film: The Intermediality of Film Stardom in Britain during the 1910s', Screen, 44:3 (2003), pp. 314-325.
• '"England Invaded!": The Contested Authenticity of IMP's Ivanhoe (1913)', in Alan Burton, Laraine Porter (eds), Crossing the Pond: The 'Special Relationship' Between British and American Cinema Before 1930 (Trowbridge: Flicks, 2002).
• '"His Every Movement 'Tells'": Gesture, Character Acting and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in Trilby (U.K.; 1914)' in Leonardo Querisima, Laura Vichi (eds), The Visible Man: The Film Actor from Early Cinema to the Threshold of Modern Cinema (Udine: Forum, 2002).
  
• ‘Is there an English Mary Pickford?’: Alma Taylor and ambivalent British stardom in the 1910s', in Bruce Babington (ed.), British Stars and Stardom (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
• ‘That type of picture which appeals to the best instincts’: Ideal’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1916) and the vagaries of the Heritage film in the 1910s', in Alan Burton, Laraine Porter (eds.), Performing Silent British Cinema (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 2001).
• ‘It would be a mistake to strive for subtlety of effect’: Richard III and populist, ‘pantomime’ Shakespeare in the 1910s', in Andrew Higson (ed.), Young and Innocent? Cinema and Britain, 1896-1930 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002).
• 'A Guide to Bibliographical and Archival Sources on British Cinema from the First World War to the Coming of Sound', in Andrew Higson (ed.), Young and Innocent? Cinema and Britain, 1896-1930 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002).
• 'Big Studio Production in the Pre-Quota Era', in Robert Murphy (ed.), The British Cinema Book (2nd ed.; London: BFI, 2002).