Melanie Bell
Biographic Data
| ID | 3766538 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melanie Bell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melanie |
| FAMILY NAME | Bell |
| SIGNATURE | BELL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2845-7427 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Dressing Gainsborough Pictures: The Costume House in British Film History
Costume houses such as B. J. Simmons & Co. made costumes for hundreds of twentieth-century British films, yet their contribution is barely acknowledged in histories of British cinema. This is because western cultures have a long tradition of privileging design over making: this has led to the marginalisation of craft skills and the labour of making. Drawing on Simmons’s archival papers, this article explores this costume house’s 1940s work with G…
Studying full-shift inhalation exposures to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) among Latino workers in very small-sized beauty salons and auto repair shops
Background: One in every 200 US jobs is in a beauty salon or auto repair shop, where workers are regularly exposed to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that may cause a range of short- and long-term health issues. In these shops, Latino workers are overrepresented and lack culturally and linguistically appropriate industrial hygiene resources. This leaves a gap in knowledge on inhalation exposures to VOCs in this hard-to-reach and ubiquitous work…
Feminist histories of costuming film: Gordon Conway, 1930s British cinema and the collaborative world of Mayfair sewing
In an interview conducted in 1974, the actress Jessie Matthews singled out a dress she wore in The Good Companions (Victor Saville, 1933) as one of her all-time favourites.Worn for the film's 'Three Wishes' songand-dance sequence, the actor vividly remembered the dress for its 'dazzling sequinned neckline, and cloud upon cloud of floating transparent chiffon, covered in ostrich feathers' (figures 1 and 2). 1 The costume was designed specifically …
Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema
‘I owe it to those women to own it’: Women, Media Production and Intergenerational Dialogue through Oral History
While the academy is faced with increasing calls for its research to be socially relevant, a long-established principle of feminism has been the discovery and use of knowledge produced by, for and about women. Informed by feminist debates, the Histories of Women in the British Film and Television Industries project undertook a number of engagement activities drawing on the oral histories of women who had worked in the British media industries. Th…
Rebuilding Britain
Women's marginalization in the British feature film industry is well documented: gender discrimination, and sometimes overt segregation, shut most women out of senior creative roles after the introduction of sound. What has received less critical attention is their participation in nonfiction filmmaking, which offered women greater employment opportunities, especially in the decades after World War II as Britain rebuilt its economy. This article …
Learning to listen: Histories of women’s soundwork in the British film industry
The study of sound has become established as a field of film scholarship over the last two decades. Early works on sound theory (
Feminism and women's film criticism in post-war Britain, 1945–1959
Feminist film criticism is widely thought to have started in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the “Images of Woman” debate associated with critics such as Marjorie Rosen provided the foundation for later developments in feminist film theory. Antonia Lant has recently claimed the immediate post-1950 period to be a barren time for female-authored publications on film and cinema. This article argues that, contrary to received wisdom, the post-war…
Film Criticism as ‘Women's Work’: The Gendered Economy of Film Criticism in Britain, 1945–65
Quality', Cinema and the 'Superior Woman' Persona: Understanding women's film criticism in post-war Britain (1945-59)
Criticism was a particularly buoyant area of film culture in Britain during the post‐war period, a regular feature in newspapers, periodicals, magazines, and BBC radio programmes. What has not been widely recognised is the central role that women played as critics of film at this time, and where their interests differed from those of their male peers. This article recovers the contribution made by women film critics, arguing that middle‐class wri…
Feminism and women's film criticism in post-war Britain, 1945–1959
Feminist film criticism is widely thought to have started in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the “Images of Woman” debate associated with critics such as Marjorie Rosen provided the foundation for later developments in feminist film theory. Antonia Lant has recently claimed the immediate post-1950 period to be a barren time for female-authored publications on film and cinema. This article argues that, contrary to received wisdom, the post-war…
Quality', Cinema and the 'Superior Woman' Persona: Understanding women's film criticism in post-war Britain (1945-59)
Criticism was a particularly buoyant area of film culture in Britain during the post‐war period, a regular feature in newspapers, periodicals, magazines, and BBC radio programmes. What has not been widely recognised is the central role that women played as critics of film at this time, and where their interests differed from those of their male peers. This article recovers the contribution made by women film critics, arguing that middle‐class wri…
Feminism and women's film criticism in post-war Britain, 1945–1959
Feminist film criticism is widely thought to have started in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the “Images of Woman” debate associated with critics such as Marjorie Rosen provided the foundation for later developments in feminist film theory. Antonia Lant has recently claimed the immediate post-1950 period to be a barren time for female-authored publications on film and cinema. This article argues that, contrary to received wisdom, the post-war…
Film Criticism as ‘Women's Work’: The Gendered Economy of Film Criticism in Britain, 1945–65
Learning to listen: Histories of women’s soundwork in the British film industry
The study of sound has become established as a field of film scholarship over the last two decades. Early works on sound theory (
Rebuilding Britain
Women's marginalization in the British feature film industry is well documented: gender discrimination, and sometimes overt segregation, shut most women out of senior creative roles after the introduction of sound. What has received less critical attention is their participation in nonfiction filmmaking, which offered women greater employment opportunities, especially in the decades after World War II as Britain rebuilt its economy. This article …
Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema
‘I owe it to those women to own it’: Women, Media Production and Intergenerational Dialogue through Oral History
While the academy is faced with increasing calls for its research to be socially relevant, a long-established principle of feminism has been the discovery and use of knowledge produced by, for and about women. Informed by feminist debates, the Histories of Women in the British Film and Television Industries project undertook a number of engagement activities drawing on the oral histories of women who had worked in the British media industries. Th…
Studying full-shift inhalation exposures to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) among Latino workers in very small-sized beauty salons and auto repair shops
Background: One in every 200 US jobs is in a beauty salon or auto repair shop, where workers are regularly exposed to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that may cause a range of short- and long-term health issues. In these shops, Latino workers are overrepresented and lack culturally and linguistically appropriate industrial hygiene resources. This leaves a gap in knowledge on inhalation exposures to VOCs in this hard-to-reach and ubiquitous work…
Feminist histories of costuming film: Gordon Conway, 1930s British cinema and the collaborative world of Mayfair sewing
In an interview conducted in 1974, the actress Jessie Matthews singled out a dress she wore in The Good Companions (Victor Saville, 1933) as one of her all-time favourites.Worn for the film's 'Three Wishes' songand-dance sequence, the actor vividly remembered the dress for its 'dazzling sequinned neckline, and cloud upon cloud of floating transparent chiffon, covered in ostrich feathers' (figures 1 and 2). 1 The costume was designed specifically …
Dressing Gainsborough Pictures: The Costume House in British Film History
Costume houses such as B. J. Simmons & Co. made costumes for hundreds of twentieth-century British films, yet their contribution is barely acknowledged in histories of British cinema. This is because western cultures have a long tradition of privileging design over making: this has led to the marginalisation of craft skills and the labour of making. Drawing on Simmons’s archival papers, this article explores this costume house’s 1940s work with G…
Art (7 works) · Movie theater (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (6 works) · History (6 works) · Art history (5 works) · Media studies (5 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Visual arts (4 works)