Dr Paul Flaig

Dr Paul Flaig

Director of Impact

Director of Research

Lecturer in Film Studies

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 7482
Email
pf49@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
Ground floor
Location
99 North Street
Office hours
By appointment only

Ìý

Biography

Paul Flaig is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø. He is the author of (Bloomsbury "World Cinema" series, 2025), co-editor, with Katherine Groo, of the award-winning edited collection, (Routledge / AFI Film Reader, 2015) and co-director, with Dora Osborne, of the (GSSN). Paul completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Cornell University in 2013. Prior to joining the department at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, he was Lecturer in Film & Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen from 2013 to 2017.

Paul's writing has appeared in many journals and edited collections, including Cinema Journal,ÌýScreen,ÌýCamera Obscura,Ìýanimation, and Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (JCMS). Between 2017 and 2022 he was co-editor of Professional Notes for JCMS and received, as an editorial board member, a SCMS Distinguished Service Award. With Dora Osborne and Molly Harrabin he is currently preparing publication of a new biannual journal, German Screen Studies (Berghahn). This journal is supported by the second of two DAAD Promoting German Studies grants for GSSN activities (2022-2024, 2025-2027).

Exploring the transformative impact of American slapstick, cartoon and screwball cinemas on cultures and legacies of Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-1933), Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed is the culmination of Paul's long-standing interest in histories and theories of film comedy. Across a series of essays he has re-read foundational texts in the philosophy of comedy (Freud, Lacan, Bergson, Adorno, Benjamin, Cavell) vis-a-vis works by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Disney, Pixar, the Marx Brothers, Jackie Chan and others. Most recently, he has published an essay entitled forÌýThe Oxford Handbook of Screen Comedy (2025). He is also working on a new project entitled Slapstick After Fordism, which extends his interests in comedy into an examination of slapstick’s post-industrial legacies in world cinema.

Beginning withÌýNew Silent Cinema, Paul has also developed a series of essays exploring contemporary and historical returns to early and silent film across popular and avant-garde cinemas, art, literature and new media. His own contribution to New Silent Cinema has initiated an ongoing series of essays mapping the conditions and possibilities of a feminist media archaeology, which he has written about via theoretical texts by Friedrich Kittler and Wolfgang Ernst, found footage experiments by Bill Morrison, Gustav Deutsch, and Caroline Martel, digital restorations of Thomas Edison's phonographic dolls, and films by Zoe Beloff.

Paul is currently working on a new project provisionally entitled "Permanent Déjà Vu," which will explore the contemporary prevalence for time-loop narratives in film, streaming platforms, gaming and literature through a genealogy of depictions of déjà vu in preceding realist, modernist and post-modern novels, short fiction, cinema and television.

PhD supervision

  • CamilaÌýContreras-Langlois
  • IlincaÌýVanau

Selected publications

  • Flaig, P., 21 Aug 2025, The Oxford handbook of screen comedy. Kunze, P. & Costanzo, W. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 370-396 (Oxford Handbooks).

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

  • Flaig, P., 2 Oct 2025, London: Bloomsbury Academic. (World cinema)

    Research output: Book/Report › Book

  • Open access
    Flaig, P., 17 Nov 2022, In: Frames Cinema Journal. 20, 13 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

  • Flaig, P., 6 Jul 2022, In: Screen. 63, 2, p. 261-264

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review

  • Open access
    Flaig, P., 11 Feb 2021, In: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. 60, 2, p. 4-31 29 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Flaig, P., 1 Aug 2018, The Comedy Studies Reader. Marx, N. & Sienkiewicz, M. (eds.). Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, p. 79-89 11 p.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

  • Open access
    Flaig, P., 1 Sept 2018, In: Camera Obscura. 33, 2 (98), p. 105-137

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Flaig, P., 4 Oct 2016, Continuity and crisis in German cinema, 1928-1936. Hales, B., Petrescu, M. & Weinstein, V. (eds.). Rochester, NY: Camden House, p. 73-91 19 p. (Screen cultures: German film and the visual).

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

  • Open access
    Flaig, P., 1 Mar 2016, In: Animation. 11, 1, p. 59-74 16 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Flaig, P., 2016, Lasting Screen Stars: Images that Fade and Personas that Endure. Bolton, L. & Lobalzo Wright, J. (eds.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 127-139 13 p.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Ìý