Michelle Devereaux

Thesis title: Spirits in Solitude: Romanticism in the Films of Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman and Wes Anderson

Background

Michelle received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and Video (Hons) from Toronto’s York University and a Bachelor of Journalism (Hons) from Ryerson University, also in Toronto. She received an MSc with distinction in Film Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 2008. She recently submitted her PhD thesis, which was supervised by Dr David Sorfa and co-supervised by Dr Daniel Yacavone.

For the past several years she has worked as a freelance film journalist and critic and has contributed to the programming and editorial staffs of several major film festivals, including Sundance and the San Francisco International Film Festival.

CV

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Research summary

Michelle’s PhD research examines the confluence of “metamodernism” and historical conceptions of Romanticism in contemporary American film, including the aesthetics of the sublime and beautiful and theories of personal identity, intersubjectivity, and authenticity. 

Current research interests

Her research interests include emotion and affect studies, aesthetics and ethics, feminist/gender/queer theory, film and the other arts, animal studies and eco-criticism, film and memory, fictional world creation and the fantastic, everyday life theory, genre study, and modernism on film.