Dr Hila Shachar

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

Centre for Adaptations

Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Dance

Click here for a complete list of Hila's research outputs.

• Shachar, Hila, Screening the Author: The Literary Biopic (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2019).
• Shachar, Hila, ‘Representing the Unrepresentable: The Army of Crime and Biopic Generic Conventions of Identity’, in A Companion to the Biopic, ed. Deborah Cartmell and Ashley D. Polasek (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming 2019).
• Shachar, Hila, ‘The Muse’s Tale: Rewriting the English Author in The Invisible Woman’, in Rule, Britannia! The Biopic and British National Identity, ed. Homer B. Pettey and R. Barton Palmer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018), pp. 145-162.
• Shachar, Hila, ‘“A dream within a dream”: The Politics of Dislocation in Head On and Picnic at Hanging Rock’, in Where is Adaptation?: Mapping Cultures, Texts, and Contexts (FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures), ed. Casie Hermansson and Janet Zepernick (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2018), pp. 399-414.
• Shachar, Hila (2018) ‘“He said we can choose our lives”: freedom, intimacy, and identity in Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013)’, Studies in European Cinema, Volume 15, Number 2-3 (Recent Quality Film and the Future of the Republic of Europe), pp. 146-161. DOI: 10.1080/17411548.2018.1432121
• Shachar, Hila, Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature: Wuthering Heights and Company (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Nominated for the 2012 Premier’s Book Awards. Featured in The New York Times.
• Shachar, Hila, ‘Authorial Histories: The Historical Film and the Literary Biopic’, in A Companion to the Historical Film, ed. Robert A. Rosenstone and Constantin Parvulescu (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 199-219.
• Shachar, Hila, ‘The Lost Mother and the Enclosed Lady: Gender and Domesticity in MTV’s Adaptation of Wuthering Heights’, in Neo-Victorian Families: Gender, Sexual and Cultural Politics, ed. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben (Amsterdam; New York, NY: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 221-44.
• Shachar, Hila, ‘A Post-Feminist Romance: Love, Gender and Intertextuality in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga’, in Theorizing Twilight: Essays on What’s at Stake in a Post-Vampire World, ed. Natalie Wilson and Maggie Parke (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2011), pp. 147-161.
• Shachar, Hila, ‘The Legacy of Hell: Wuthering Heights on Film and Gilbert and Gubar’s Feminist Poetics’, in Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic After Thirty Years, ed. Annette Federico (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), pp. 149-169.

[Full list of publications available upon request.]

• Adaptation studies
• Film/Screen studies and theory
• Contemporary French Cinema
• Screening the Holocaust
• Nineteenth-century literature
• Neo-Victorian studies
• The Brontës
• The Beat authors
• Feminist theory and gender studies
• Australian literature and film
• Contemporary American literature
• Ballet and dance adaptation

• Adaptation studies
• Film/Screen studies and theory
• Nineteenth-century literature
• Neo-Victorian studies
• The Brontës
• The Beat authors
• Feminist theory and gender studies
• Australian literature and film
• Contemporary American literature

Doctor of Philosophy

English and Cultural Studies

The University of Western Australia

2010

 

Postgraduate Teaching Internship Certificate

The University of Western Australia

2006

 

Bachelor of Arts Degree with First Class Honours in English and European Studies

The University of Western Australia

2005

ENGL1009: Introduction to English & Adaptation

ENGL2019: Screen & Literary Adaptations of the Classics

ENGL3000: Dissertation

ENGL3084: Studies in Literature and Film

ENGL3100: Radical and Contemporary Adaptations

CREW1002: Reading for Craft

I also teach on a range of English and Humanities MA courses.

• Shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, February 2018.
• Longlisted for the Mslexia Annual Poetry Competition, 2017.
• Faculty Research Leave Scheme, De Montfort University, 2016.
• Finalist for the 2015 ELLE UK Talent Writing Competition, December 2015.
• Certificate of Research Supervision, De Montfort University, 2014.
• RIF6 Small Grant: Biopics: Adapting Historical Figures, De Montfort University, 2014.
• OLT Innovation and Development Research Grant ($160,000), Office for Learning and Teaching, Australian Government, 2012. Headed by Professor Imelda Whelehan.
• Publication Subsidy Small Grant ($3000), The Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2011.
• Spilling Ink Review Short Story Competition Winner, Unbound Press, 2010.
• School of Social and Cultural Studies Publications Grant, The University of Western Australia, 2009.
• Australian Bicentennial Scholarship, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King’s College, London, 2007.
• Dean’s Postgraduate Award, The University of Western Australia, 2007.
• Foundations of University Teaching and Learning Certificate (33-hour professional development programme), The University of Western Australia, 2007.
• Australian Postgraduate Award (doctoral scholarship), The University of Western Australia, 2005-2009.
• Ernest & Evelyn Havill Shacklock Scholarship in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (doctoral scholarship awarded to the highest-ranked student in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), The University of Western Australia, 2005-2009.

[Full list of awards/certificates is available upon request.]

• Centre for Adaptations
• The Brontë Society
• Australasian Victorian Studies Association
• Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Dance
• Arts Alliance

• Emily Brontë: A Peculiar Music (Bicentenary Conference), 7-9 September 2018, Marriott Hotel, York. My Contribution: Keynote Lecture: ‘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
• Podcast interview titled, ‘Inventing Dickens’, for Phoenix Cinema (Leicester), 14 December 2017: https://www.phoenix.org.uk/blog/inventing-dickens/
• Adaptation and Dance (which I co-organised with Elinor Parsons), 2 March 2016, Trinity House, De Montfort University. My Contribution: Conference Welcome Address: ‘Adaptation and Dance’.
• Annual British Film Institute/London Association for the Teaching of English Winter Conference – Romance, Film and English, 12 December 2015, British Film Institute, Southbank, London. My Contribution: Keynote Lecture: ‘The Classic Novel on Film: A Cultural Memory’.
• The Tenth Annual Conference of the Association of Adaptation Studies, 24-25 September 2015, Senate House, London. My Contribution: Conference Paper: ‘“You’re my playground love”: The Present and Absent City in Ana Kokkinos’s Head On (1998) and Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999)’.
• Hila Shachar, ‘Jane Eyre on Stage and Screen’, 11 September 2015, The National Theatre, Southbank, London. Invited public talk and pre-show Q&A session.
• Biopic Adaptations, 24 February 2015, Trinity House, De Montfort University. My Contribution: Keynote Q&A session where I interviewed Amanda Coe: ‘In Conversation With Amanda Coe (BAFTA-award winning BBC screenwriter)’.
• Invited panellist speaker for Paramount Pictures’ official Premiere Panel for the film, Wuthering Heights (2011), on 11 October 2012, Cinema Paradiso. Event hosted by Professor Terri-ann White (Director, University of Western Australia Publishing).
• Invited panellist speaker for ABC’s/Universal Pictures Australasia’s official Premiere Panel for the film, Jane Eyre (2011), on 8 August 2011, Cinema Paradiso. Event hosted by Gillian O’Shaughnessy (ABC – Australian Broadcasting Corporation – presenter/journalist).
• Fifth Annual Limina Conference, 2 July 2010, The University of Western Australia. My Contribution: Conference Paper: ‘The Marginal Wuthering Heights: Cultural, National and Historical­ Demystific­ation in Jacques Rivette’s Hurlevent’.
• Neo-Victorianism: The Politics and Aesthetics of Appropriation, 10-12 September 2007, The Centre for Victorian Studies, University of Exeter. My Contribution: Conference Paper: ‘“Neo-Victorian” Heathcliff: Screen Adaptations of Wuthering Heights and the Masculine as Spectacle’.
• Masculinity and the Other, 29-30 August 2007, Balliol College, University of Oxford. My Contribution: Conference Paper: ‘Heathcliff’s Others: Heroic Masculinity in Wuthering Heights’. Funded by Australian Bicentennial Scholarship, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College, London.
• Interviewed on ABC Northern Tasmania/ABC 936 Hobart Radio’s ‘Afternoons’ programme by Peter Newlinds regarding Wuthering Heights adaptations on 13 June 2007.      
• Australasian Victorian Studies AssociationConference, 7-11 February 2007, The University of Western Australia. My Contribution: Conference Paper: ‘Screen Voyages: Wuthering Heights and Adaptation as “Travel” and “Translation”’.

[Full list of conference/public participation available upon request.]

• Freelance writing for The Australian Ballet (2010-onwards).
• Copywriting, freelance writing, marketing and editing work for The Australian Ballet, The Guardian, Desktop magazine, The Australian Film Institute, The Australian Government (Office for Women), Underscore magazine, Fremantle Markets, Alphabet journal, and others.

Jennifer Miller (AHRC-funded Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership), Full-time, (2nd supervisor).

• Bridging the gap: teaching adaptations across the disciplines and sharing content for curriculum renewal ($160,000), Office for Learning and Teaching, Australian Government, 2011-2013. Led by Professor Imelda Whelehan (University of Tasmania), with project partners: Dr Hila Shachar (The University of Western Australia), Professor David Sadler (University of Tasmania), Dr Lisa Fletcher (University of Tasmania), Associate Professor Frances Bonner (University of Queensland), Associate Professor Jason Jacobs (University of Queensland) and Dr Christopher Worth (Monash University).
• Publication Subsidy Small Grant ($3000), The Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2011.

• Screening the Author: The Literary Biopic (£4680) (PI), Faculty Research Leave Scheme, 9 January – 16 June 2017.
• Biopics: Adapting Historical Figures (£700), RIF6 bids for 2014/15, Co-worker/organiser (CI), in collaboration with Professor Deborah Cartmell (PI).

• Peer reviewer for Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan.
• Book reviewer for Studies in the Novel (University of North Texas) and Victoriographies (Edinburgh University Press).
• Writer for The Australian Ballet.
• Invited speaker and panellist for ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures (2011, 2012).