KIRSTY SINCLAIR DOOTSON
EDUCATION
2018 PhD, Yale University, Film Studies and History of Art
2011 MA, University of Warwick, Film and Television Studies
2007 MPhil, University of Cambridge, History of Art
2006 BA Hons, University of Cambridge, History of Art
APPOINTMENTS
2023 Lecturer (Assistant Professor), Film and Media, UCL
2019-2022 Lecturer (Assistant Professor), Film Studies, University of St Andrews
2018-2021 Junior Research Fellow, Newnham College, Cambridge University
PUBLICATIONS
Books
2023 The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality, and British Modernity (Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press)
Articles
2020 with Zhaoyu Zhu, ‘Did Madame Mao Dream in Technicolor? Rethinking Cold War Colour Cinema through Technicolor’s “Chinese Copy’”, Screen 61:3 (Autumn 2020): 343-367 (winner of the Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Award and Screen Biennial Prize, Honourable Mention for the BAFTSS Best Article Award).
2019 ‘The Texture of Capitalism: Industrial Oil Colours and the Politics of Paint in the Work of G. F. Watts’, British Art Studies 14, November 2019
2016 “The Hollywood Powder Puff War”: Technicolor Cosmetics in the 1930s’, Film History 28, 1 (2016): 107-31 (Highly Commended for the Annette Kuhn Essay Award and Runner Up for BAFTSS Best Doctoral Student Article Prize)
Book chapters
2025 with Xin Peng, ‘Hollywood Color: Race, Aesthetics, Technology’, The Routledge Companion to American Film History. Forthcoming February 2025.
2024 ‘Mapping the Laboratory: Technicolor Across Asia and Europe’, Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury, eds. Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe, Rutgers University Press, 2024
SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND PRIZES
2024 Best First Monograph Award, British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies
2024 First Book Prize, Modernist Studies Association
2024 Paul Mellon Centre Research Support Grant
2023 AHRC Research Networking Grant
2022 Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Award, SCMS
2021 Screen Biennial Award
2019 Frances Blanshard Dissertation Prize, Yale University
2018 Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, ACLS (declined)
2017 Junior Fellowship, Paul Mellon Centre
2016 Paul Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, CASVA (declined)
2013-2014 Museum Research Consortium Fellowship, MoMA
2010–2011 AHRC Research Preparation Masters Studentship
2007–2008 Henry Fellowship, Yale University
CONFERENCES AND TALKS
Keynote Lectures
2023 ‘The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality and British Modernity’, MPhil Conference, Centre for Film and Screen, Cambridge University
2021 ‘What Colour is the Anthropocene?’, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris
Selected Invited Talks
2023 ‘Celluloid Skin: Transparency, Sensitivity, and the Racialization of Film’, Materializing Transparency, Eikones, University of Basel
2023 ‘Decolonising in Technicolor: Post-war Colour Cinema in Britain and India’, Cinema and Empire: Technologies and Practices, Paul Mellon Centre
2022 ‘Skin, Colour, and Sensitivity: The Racial Histories of Chromatic Cinema’, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
2022 ‘The Complexion of the Chromolithograph: Colouring Skin in Victorian Print’, The Courtauld Institute, London
2020 ‘The Inks of Commerce: Colour Printing in the Age of Chromolithography’, History of Art Department, University College London
Conferences and Symposia Convened
2022 The Materials of Modernity, Newnham College, Cambridge
2018 Colour Control, Paul Mellon Centre, London
2016 Curating the Moving Image, Yale University
2015 What a Lovely Day: Mad Max Fury Road and Interstellar, Yale University
Conference Panels Convened
2023 Racialised Media Labour: Systems and Processes, Screen
2022 Gelatin and the Politics and Aesthetics of Film Stock, Screen
2019 Colour Transmissions: Aesthetics, Identity and Mid-Century Television, SCMS
Selected Conference Papers
2023 ‘Industrial Manoeuvres in the Darkroom: The Grunwick Film Processing Laboratory Strike’, University of Westminster
2023 ‘Dark Operations: The Labour of the Industrial Film Laboratory’, Screen
2023 ‘What Colour is the Anthropocene? Eco-Critical Approaches to Victorian Chromatics’, AAH
2022 ‘Colour Timing: The Labour of the Laboratory and the Aesthetics of Delay’, AAH
2021 ‘Cotton Cinema: Between Film Stock and Fashion’, BAFTSS
2019 ‘Television Black, Television White: The BBC’s Colour Problem’, SCMS
2018 ‘Technicolor in China’, Screen
2018 ‘The Texture of Capitalism: Making Colour in Victorian Britain’, AAH
TEACHING
Graduate Seminars
Global Film Colour – UCL
Hollywood/Bollywood: Industries and Histories - UCL
Film Technology and Aesthetics – St Andrews
Undergraduate Seminars
Asian Cinemas – St Andrews, co-convenor
Race and Representation – St Andrews, co-convenor
Classical Hollywood – Cambridge
Painting and Cinema –Yale, co-convenor
Undergraduate Lecture Courses
Global Film History and Historiography – St Andrews, convenor and co-instructor
Modern World Cinemas – St Andrews, co-instructor