Dr Katherine Whitehurst PhD

Lecturer Communication and Media

About

Personal Statement

Katherine has worked as a Lecturer in Media and Film at the University of Liverpool since 2017. She joined from the University of Stirling, where she completed her PhD in Media and Cultural Studies. Katherine’s research centres on adaptation; fairy tales; child, youth and age studies; screen and literature; girlhood and identity; cultural memory; feminism; and gender. Her recent publications include the journal articles ‘Youth Films and the Nation: Imagining Obama's American Foreign Policy in Disney’s Moana' (Narrative Culture, 2021), 'Genre and Female Ageing in Two Contemporary Filmic Adaptations of “Snow White”' (Age, Culture, Humanities, 2019), 'Growing up in Magical Time: Representations of Female Growth and Development in ABC’s Once Upon a Time’ (Narrative Culture, 2018) and ‘The Aged Woman as Spectre in Two Filmic Adaptations of Snow White’ (Marvels and Tales, 2019) as well as the book chapter ‘Stories of Motherhood and Ageing in ABC’s Television Programme Once Upon a Time’ in Schrage-Frueh et al. (eds.) Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture (Palgrave, 2017). Katherine recently completed a book for the Routledge Cinema and Youth Cultures Series, entitled: Precious: Identity, Adaptation and the African American Youth Film. Katherine is particularly interested in the literary, filmic and televisual adaptations of bildungsroman and reifungsroman narratives, particularly when these representations pertain to girls and women.