Teaching Strengths
Dr Saige Walton
Research Degree Coordinator
School of Communication, Media and Journalism
College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities
Saige Walton is a Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies and one of the Associate Directors of the Creative People, Products and Places (CP3) research centre, based in UniSA Creative. She also serves as a Research Degree Coordinator.
She is a film and visual culture studies scholar who works in American, European and World Cinema contexts. She is particularly interested in issues relating to screen aesthetics and the body, often using phenomenological philosophy as well as other film-philosophical frameworks to make 'sense' of the cinema. She also teaches and conducts research in areas relating to popular film genres, horror, experimental film/media, art and inter-mediality.
Saige's first scholarly monograph - Cinema's Baroque Flesh: Film, Phenomenology and the Art of Entanglement - was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2016 (reviewed in Film-Philosophy; reviewed in Screening the Past; reviewed in Alphaville). In this book, she explores the parallels between philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's thought, film-phenomenology and the baroque, establishing the baroque as its own distinct cinema of the senses. You can access a PDF of the Introduction here: Cinema's Baroque Flesh.
Building on her interest in film and the body, she has edited two special journal issues relating to these topics: "Materialising Absence in Film and Media" (with Nadine Boljkovac), published in Screening the Past (Issue 43 2018) and a special issue of Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media on "Screening the Artist" (co-edited with Lucio Crispino) which featured a number of leading international film/media and film-philosophy scholars (Issue 23 2022). You can read the Introduction and access the entire issue here: "Screening the Artist" Alphaville Special Issue.
Saige's second monograph in process explores the embodiment and ethics of a contemporary cinema of poetry. Publications arising from Saige's work on film and the poetic have appeared in leading international film and critical theory journals such as Film-Philosophy, Paragraph and Projections.
Saige serves as peer reviewer for a wide range of journals and publication houses such as Bloosmbury Publishing, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Third Text, Film-Philosophy, French Screen Studies, the New Review of Film and Television Studies, Senses of Cinema and Screening the Past, among others. She is a member of the International Advisory Board for Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media.
Prior to joining the University of South Australia in 2012, Saige taught screen, media and cultural studies subjects at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is also a former Assistant Curator of Exhibitions with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne who has helped to curate a number of film programs, exhibitions, screen and art related events for the general public. In 2023, she collaborated with the Adelaide Film Festival to deliver the "Screen Conversations" series of talks with Australian filmmakers.
- screen aesthetics and visual culture
- film-philosophy and histories of film theory
- film and the body
- screen genres
- horror studies
- global art cinemas (especially contemporary French and European cinemas)
- moving image art and experimental film
| Date | Position | Institution name |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 - ongoing | Senior Lecturer: Screen Studies | University of South Australia |
| Date | Institution name | Country | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 - 2009 | University of Melbourne | Australia | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Date | Role | Editorial Board Name | Institution | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 - ongoing | Board Member | Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Median | University College Cork | Ireland |
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