Dr Tanya Horeck

Tanya is Professor of Film and Feminist Media Studies and Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Media and Communication degree at ARU.

Tanya’s areas of expertise include digital violence and spectatorship, gender, sexuality, and feminism, contemporary popular TV and cinema, theories of violence and affect, crime and representation.

[email protected]

Background

Tanya completed her doctorate at the University of Sussex in 2000, where she held a Commonwealth Scholarship. Her previous degrees (BA, MA) are from Carleton University in Canada.

She has published widely on topics including celebrity culture, contemporary TV, women’s cinema, true crime, and binge-watching in a range of peer-reviewed journals including New Formations, Women: A Cultural Review, Screen, and Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal. Her latest book is Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Era (Wayne State University Press, 2019). Her current projects include an article on Keanu Reeves as a 'god' of the internet and a piece on Tiger King memes.

Tanya is also involved in a number of impact and public engagement projects based on her research into violence and image-based sexual abuse:

The Teachable Moments Project

The Teachable Moments project is an educational initiative to create a series of digital resources based around streaming TV shows and films popular with teens. Through worksheets based on topics such as 'Pleasure and Communication', 'Sexual Health' and 'Homophobia' from episodes of shows such as Netflix’s Sex Education (2017-), 'Teachable Moments' addresses key learning points from the new Relationships and Sex Education guidance and encourages critical thinking. The worksheets are co-designed by Tanya and the NGO sex education organization Sexplain.

Digital Sexual Cultures Feminist Research and Engagement Consortium

Tanya is part of the Digital Sexual Cultures Feminist Research and Engagement Consortium that works closely with stakeholders, third-sector organizations, government and policy makers to explore issues around contemporary digital sexual cultures and online sexual harassment. The aim is to find ways to better equip school leaders, teachers, parents and young people to manage the risks and rewards of using digital technologies in their intimate relationships.

Online Sexual Harassment Guidance & Policy

Tanya has collaborated with colleagues Professor Jessica Ringrose (University College London), Dr Kaitlyn Mendes (University of Leicester) and the NGO Sexplain, to launch a policy document that offers comprehensive guidance for schools on how to deal with the issue of online sexual harassment. This policy offers a strong response to existing sexting and cyberbullying policies that neglect the gendered and sexualised elements of online harms, risks, hate and abuse. The guidance and the policy can be found on Sexplain and the University of Leicester websites.

Research interests

• Contemporary popular cinema and television
• Celebrity culture
• Digital culture and social media
• Digital violence and image-based sexual abuse
• Hashtag activism
• Contemporary women's cinema
• Documentary film and theory
• Crime, media and culture
• Affect theory
• Feminism and feminisit media studies
• The intersectionality of gender, class, race and sexuality in popular culture

Areas of research supervision

Tanya is keen to supervise PhDs in any of the areas listed under her research interests.

Qualifications

• DPhil, University of Sussex, 2000
• MA, Carleton University, 1995
• BA, Carleton University, 1992

Memberships, editorial boards

• MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture
• Society for Cinema and Media Studie
• British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies
• Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association
• Film Studies Association of Canada

Selected recent publications

Horeck, T. 2021. A 'Momentary Melancholy': Female Desire and the Promise of Happiness in the Cinema of Sarah Polley in Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium, (eds) Charles Tepperman and Lee Carruthers, McGill-Queens University Press.

Horeck, T. 2020. 'Rosie's Room' and 'Bullet's Phone': The Commodification of the Lost Girl in The Killing and its Paratexts, in Capitalism, Crime and Media in the 21st Century, (eds) N. Ewen, A. Grattan and M. Leaning and P. Mannin, Palgrave Macmillan.

Horeck, T. 2020. Netflix Feminism: Binge-watching Rape Culture in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Unbelievable, in Bingewatching and the Future of Television Research, (ed.), Mareike Jenner. University of Edinburgh Press.

Horeck, T. 2019. Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Era. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Horeck, T. 2019. Streaming Sexual Violence: Binge-watching Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why, Special Issue of Participations on Watching and Listening in the Streaming Era, November 2019.

Horeck, T. 2018. Post Weinstein: Gendered Power and Harassment in the Media Industries, with Shelley Cobb, co-written introduction and co-edited special Commentary and Criticism, Feminist Media Studies, May 2018, Vol. 18 (3), pp 489-491.

Horeck, T. 2018. Screening Affect: Rape Culture & the Digital Interface in Top of the Lake and The Fall, Television & New Media, Volume 19 Issue 6, September, pp. 569-587.

Horeck, T. 2018. On Binge-watching: 9 Critical Propositions, (co-written with Tina Kendall and Mareike Jenner) Critical Studies in Television, Winter, pp. 499-504.

Horeck, T. 2016. The Affective Labour of One Born Every Minute in its UK and US formats, in Hannah Hamad and Julia Hallam (eds), The Medical Issue, Critical Studies in Television, 'The Medical Issue', vol. 11 no. 2, pp. 164-176.

Horeck, T. 2015. #Renee Zellweger’s Face in Celebrity Studies, 6.2, pp. 261-264.

Horeck, T., 2014. #askthicke: 'Blurred Lines', Rape Culture, and the Feminist Hashtag Takeover. In: Feminist Media Studies.

Horeck, T., 2014. This film will rock you to your core: Emotion and Affect in Dear Zachary and the Real Crime Documentary., In: Crime, Media, Culture, Summer, pp. 151-167.

Horeck, T., Åström, B. and Gregersdotter, K. (Eds.), 2013. Rape in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy and Beyond. London/NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Horeck, T., and Kendall, T. (Eds.), 2011. The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.

Horeck, T., 2009. Lost Girls: The Fiction of Joyce Carol Oates. In: Contemporary Women’s Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.24-39.

Horeck, T., 2007. From Document to Drama: Capturing Aileen Wuornos. Screen, 48(2), Summer, pp.141-159.

Horeck, T., 2004. Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and Film. London/New York: Routledge.