Dr Hila Shachar is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Film, and a member of the Centre for Adaptations whose research focuses on the adaptation of literary works and authors in various media including film, television, song, graphic novel, and ballet. She also has research expertise in nineteenth-century literature, feminist theory, film theory, the Beat authors, Australian and French cinema, and contemporary Australian and American literature.
Her book, Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), was featured in The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, as well as nominated for the 2012 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. Her next book, Screening the Author: The Literary Biopic (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2019), examines the screen adaptation of the figure of the author and biographies of well-known writers, including Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, the Brontës, and others. She is currently also working on a range of publications on other topics, including contemporary French film, the screen representation of the Holocaust and Jewish resistance fighters, and Australian screen adaptations.
Hila has considerable professional writing experience, having written for The Guardian, Desktop magazine, Overland journal, The Australian Government (Office for Women), The Australian Film Institute, Underscore magazine, The STW Group (Australasia’s largest Communications Group), The Conversation, and many others. She is also a regular writer for The Australian Ballet. In her previous non-academic roles, she has worked in marketing, editing, and online content strategy in the private sector. Her fictional work has appeared in several publications, and she was a finalist for the 2015 ELLE UK Talent Writing Competition and shortlisted for the February 2018 Bath Flash Fiction Award.
Hila has recently given a keynote lecture at the Bicentenary Conference for Emily Brontë, Emily Brontë: A Peculiar Music (7-9 September 2018, Marriott Hotel, York), titled, ‘Muse, Sister, Myth: The Cultural Afterlives of Emily Brontë on Screen’. https://www.bronte.org.uk/bronte-200/events/548/emily-bronte-a-peculiar-music/561
She has also recently published an article at The Conversation on the subject of this lecture: https://theconversation.com/the-real-emily-bronte-was-red-in-tooth-and-claw-forget-the-on-screen-romance-101913