Dr. Lisa Funnell
Associate Dean / Author / Media Educator
Books
Dr. Lisa Funnell is an award-winning author with 9 books in print, press, or under contract with academic publishers. She has published books on a variety of film and media topics including gender and geopolitics in James Bond, Chinese warrior women, transnational filmmaking, and the #MeToo Movement in Hollywood. She loves engaging in interdisciplinary collaborations with scholars working in different fields and developing new synergistic lenses for film/media analysis.
AUTHORED BOOKS:
The Geographies, Genders, and Geopolitics of James Bond
By: Lisa Funnell and Klaus Dodds
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017
This book discusses the representational geographies of the Bond film franchise through a new interdisciplinary. It examines such overlooked topics as (i) the shifting and gendering of geopolitical relations; (ii) the differing depiction and evaluation of vertical/modern and horizontal/pre-modern spaces; (iii) the use of classical elements in defining gender, sexuality, heroic competency, and geopolitical conflict; (iv) and the ongoing importance of haptics (i.e. touch), kinesics (i.e. movement), and proxemics (i.e. the use of space) in defining the embodied and emotive world of Bond.
“[T]his book opened my eyes to new ways of understanding the Bond films.” ~ Dr. James Chapman
“Brilliantly perceptive and beautifully written” ~ Dr. Nick Vaughn-Williams
Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star
By: Lisa Funnell
SUNY Press, 2014
This book examines the impact of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule on the representation of warrior women in action films produced in Hong Kong and, increasingly, in cooperation with mainland China and Hollywood. Hong Kong cinema has offered space for the development of transnational Chinese screen identities that challenge the racial stereotypes historically associated with the Asian female body in the West. The ethnic/national differentiation of transnational Chinese female stars―such as Michelle Yeoh (Hong Kong Chinese), Gong Li (mainland Chinese), Lucy Liu (Chinese American), and Charlene Choi (Chinese Canadian)―is part of an ongoing negotiation of social, cultural, and geopolitical identities in the Chinese-speaking world.
Awards
- Winner, Emily Toth Award, Best Work in Women’s Studies, PCA/ACA
- Winner, Bronze Medal, Women’s Issues Category, IPPY Awards
EDITED BOOKS:
Resisting James Bond: Power and Privilege in the Daniel Craig Era
Edited by: Lisa Funnell and Christoph Lindner
Wallflower Press, 2023
Beginning with Casino Royale (2006) and ending with No Time to Die (2021), the Daniel Craig era of James Bond films coincides with the rise of various justice movements challenging deeply entrenched systems of inequality and oppression, ranging from sexism, racism, and immigration to 2SLGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive justice and climate change. While focus is often placed on individual actions and institutional policies and practices, it is important to recognize the role that culture plays within these systems. Mainstream film is not simply ‘mindless’ entertainment but a key part of a global cultural industry that naturalizes and normalizes power structures.
Engaging with these issues, Resisting James Bond is a multidisciplinary collection that explores inequality and oppression in the world of 007 through a range of critical and theoretical approaches. The chapters explore the embodiment and disembodiment of power and privilege across the formal, narrative, cultural and geopolitical elements that define the revisionist-reversionist world of Daniel Craig’s Bond.
Screening #MeToo: Rape Culture in Hollywood
Edited by: Lisa Funnell and Ralph Beliveau
SUNY Press, 2022
This book offers an important and timely discussion of the pervasive nature of rape culture in Hollywood. Essays in the collection examine films released from the 1960s onward, a broad period that coincides with the end of the Motion Picture Production Code in Hollywood, which resulted in more frequent and increasingly graphic images of sex and violence being included in mainstream movies. Our contributors are concerned not only with the content of the films under scrutiny but also with the clear relationship between the stories, how they are being told, and the culture that produced them. Screening #MeToo challenges readers to look at mainstream Hollywood films differently, in light of attitudes about art and power, sexuality and consent, and the pleasures and frustrations of criticizing “entertainment” films from these perspectives.
For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond
Edited by: Lisa Funnell
Wallflower Press, 2015
This book explores the role that women have historically played in the James Bond franchise, which greatly contributed to the international success of the films. For His Eyes Only constitutes the first book-length anthology on femininity and feminism in the Bond series. It covers 23 Eon productions from Dr. No (1962) to Skyfall (2012), considering a range of factors that have shaped the depiction of women in the franchise. This volume provides a timely look at women in the Bond franchise and offers new scholarly perspectives on the subject.
“This book is urgently needed […and] changes how we see and understand the 007 series as a whole, including our own relationship to it.” ~ Christoph Lindner
“This is an eye-opening collection for anyone who wants to see beyond the iconic images from past and present to consider that the world of Bond is nothing without women” ~ Claire Hines
American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows
Edited by: Lisa Funnell and Man-fung Yip
Routledge Advances in Film Studies Series, 2015
This collection (re)considers the complex dynamics of transnational cultural flows between American and Chinese-language film industries. The goal is to bring a more historical perspective to the subject, focusing as much on the Hollywood influence on early Shanghai or postwar Hong Kong films as on the intensifying flows between American and Chinese-language cinemas in recent decades. Contributors emphasize the processes of appropriation and reception involved in transnational cultural practices, examining film production, distribution, and reception.
Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas: The Reel Asian Exchange
Edited by: Philippa Gates and Lisa Funnell
Routledge Advances in Film Studies, 2012
This collection examines the exchange of Asian identities taking place at the levels of both film production and film reception amongst pan-Pacific cinemas. The authors consider, on the one hand, texts that exhibit what Mette Hjort refers to as, “marked transnationality,” and on the other, the polysemic nature of transnational film texts by examining the release and reception of these films.
JOURNAL ISSUES:
James Bond in the Daniel Craig Era
Edited by: Klaus Dodds and Lisa Funnell
Journal of Popular Film and Television 20.46 (2018)
This special issue in the Journal of Popular Film and Television explores the reworking of the James Bond brand across the Daniel Craig era (Casino Royale [2006], Quantum of Solace [2008], Skyfall [2012], and Spectre [2015]) from a range of critical perspectives. It features articles by Klaus Dodds, Lisa Funnell, Nick Jones, Sarah Thomas, Claire Hines, and Christopher Holliday exploring the agencies, moods, places and structures of the Craig era films.
Asian Popular Culture
Edited by: Lisa Funnell and Yuya Kiuchi
Journal of Popular Culture 49.5 (2016)
This special issue in Journal of Popular Culture draws attention to the diverse and robust scholarship being produced on Asian popular culture. It features essays that explore various facets of popular culture from Japan, South Korea, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Canada, and the United States.
Dr. Lisa Funnell 