Lianne McLarty

Areas of research

• Film: Theory; history; avant-garde cinema; popular narrative; women and film; Canadian film
• Communication: communication theory; cultural studies; popular culture theory and critical analysis; film and television; politics and political theory
• Women's studies: theory and criticism; women and media; feminist analysis of mainstream and alternative culture; women and popular culture 

Brief biography

Lianne McLarty graduated from Brock University (St. Catharines, ON) with a BA in Film Studies in 1981. She wrote her MA thesis on the avant-garde films of R. Bruce Elder in the Canadian Studies Program at Carleton University (Ottawa, ON). In 1986, she began her doctoral work in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC). Her PhD dissertation explores how the politics of contemporary horror films hinge on constructions of monstrous femininity. 

Before joining the Department of History in Art in 1992, Lianne McLarty taught in the Department of Film Studies at Queen's University, and in the Departments of Communication, Film Studies, and Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University. She teaches Film Studies in the Department of Art History & Visual Studies. Her areas of interest include the politics of popular culture, feminism, cultural theory, avant-garde cinema (particularly Canadian), and horror and science fiction films. She is currently working on a study of the cultural politics of alien invasion science fiction films which explores the cultural function of images of aliens (both benevolent and malevolent) and the role they play in negotiating social boundaries and marginalized subjectivities.

Selected Publications:

"Alien/Nation: Invasions, Abductions and the Politics of Identity" (in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media, ed. Christopher Sharrett) 

"'I'll be back': Hollywood, Sequelization, and History" (in Take Two: Defining the Sequel, eds. Paul Budra and Betty Schellenberg) 

"'Beyond the Veil of the Flesh': Cronenberg and the Disembodiment of Horror" (in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry K. Grant) 

"Imagining the Past and Place: Memory and Landscape in the Films of Richard Hancox" (in Richard Hancox, ed. Catherine Jonasson) 

"The Films of R. Bruce Elder: The Evolving Vision" (in Take Two: A Tribute to Canadian Film, ed. Seth Feldman)