Dr Julia Havas
Lecturer in Film and Television

Profile

Biography

I earned my Master’s degrees in German Studies (2006), Film Studies (2008), and Teaching and Education (2008) at ELTE University, Budapest. I completed my PhD at the University of East Anglia in 2017, funded by UEA’s PG Research Studentship Scheme. My thesis investigated the discursive interplay between cultural value, feminist politics, and genre in the post-millennial American “feminist quality TV” phenomenon, and was published as a monograph in 2022 by Wayne State University Press. Upon completion of my doctoral studies, I joined De Montfort University as Lecturer in Media and Communication (2018-2022), before joining the University of York as Lecturer in Film and Television in September 2022.

Research

Overview

My research primarily focuses on issues of representation on TV in relation to genre, narrational conventions, cultural value, and production contexts. I have published single-authored and collaborative essays on topics such as contemporary women's comedy in television; Netflix’s binge-able programming strategy and its effects on serialised narration in relation to representations of sexual violence; and contemporary dramedy television’s relationship to genre, femininity, race, and cringe aesthetics.

More recently, my research has been concerned with the transnational relationship between Eastern European and Anglophone media, highlighting the ways these are predicated upon power relations of gender, race, and nation among other identity constructions. My article “Beasts from the East: Fantasies of Eastern Europeanness in Brexit-era BBC Drama”, co-authored with Gábor Gergely and Anna Mártonfi, interrogates the figure of the Eastern European itinerant in contemporary prestige BBC drama in the context of Brexit-era Britain. I have two single-authored pieces on late-socialist Hungarian screen culture’s gender politics: the first, on police procedural series Linda (1984-86) argues for opening up Anglo-American feminist TV studies to considerations of the Eastern European region’s gendered television histories. The second, on the 1987 documentary Szépleányok (Pretty Girls) investigates questions of gender, authorship, and the ethics of documentary filmmaking brought into sharp relief in the historic moment of Hungary’s film production shortly before the fall of Communism.

Publications

Full publications list

Monograph

Havas, Julia. 2022. Woman Up: Invoking Feminism in Quality Television. Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Journal articles

Havas, Julia, Anna Mártonfi, & Gábor Gergely. 2021. Beasts from the East: Fantasies of Eastern Europeanness in Brexit-era BBC Drama. VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture, 10 (20): 48–63. http://doi.org/10.18146/view.265

Havas, Julia. 2021. “Socialist Superwomanhood and Policing the Nation in the Hungarian TV Series Linda”. Published electronically June 14. MAI: Feminism and Popular Culture, no. 7.

             https://maifeminism.com/socialist-superwomanhood-policing-the-nation-in-linda/

Havas, Julia and Anna Mártonfi. 2019. “Bedrock Behind the Iron Curtain: Transcultural Shifts in the Hungarian Dubbed Version of The Flintstones (1960-66).” Published electronically July 24. Animation Studies.

https://journal.animationstudies.org/anna-martonfi-julia-havas-bedrock-behind-the-iron-curtain-transcultural-shifts-in-the-hungarian-dubbed-version-of-the-flintstones-1960-66/

Havas, Julia, and Maria Sulimma. 2018. “Through the Gaps of My Fingers: Genre, Femininity, and Cringe Aesthetics in Dramedy Television.” Television & New Media 21 (1): 75–94. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476418777838.

Havas, Julia. 2011. “Test-tanok. Kortárs magyar szerzői filmek nőképe.” [Body Issues. Gender Politics in Contemporary Hungarian Auteur Cinema] Metropolis Quarterly on Film Theory and History, no. 3: 30–41.

Havas, Julia. 2010. “A magyar romantikus vígjáték a 2000-es években.” [The Hungarian Romantic Comedy of the 2000s] Metropolis Quarterly on Film Theory and History, no. 1: 66–78.

Havas, Julia. 2008. “Női sorozatok: kettő plusz kettő. Kortárs amerikai tévésorozatok nőképe.” [Two Plus Two. Representations of Women in Contemporary American Television Series] Metropolis Quarterly on Film Theory and History, no. 4: 54–79.

Book chapters

Havas, Julia. 2021. “‘Dream on Princess’: Cultural Value, Gender Politics, and the Hungarian Film Canon through the Documentary Szépleányok (Pretty Girls, 1987).” In: Routledge Companion to European Cinema, edited by Gábor Gergely and Susan Hayward, 96–108. New York: Routledge.

Havas, Julia and Tanya Horeck. 2021. “Netflix Feminism: Binge-watching Rape Culture in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Unbelievable”. In: Binge-watching and Contemporary Television Research, edited by Mareike Jenner, 250-73. Edinburgh University Press.

Havas, Julia. 2017. “Tina Fey: ‘Quality’ Comedy and the Body of the Female Comedy Author.” In: Hysterical! Women in American Comedy, edited by Linda Mizejewski and Victoria Sturtevant, 347–78. Austin: University of Texas Press.