My sites: Luke McKernan | BardBox | The Bioscope | Charles Urban | Moving Image | Victorian Cinema |

Welcome!

My name is Luke McKernan - I'm a film historian, amongst other things. Here you will find a guide to my publications, presentations, research work, and personal interests

News

I have established a new blog at my workplace, the British Library. Imaginatively entitled Moving Image, its objectives are (i) to talk about the British Library as a place for the study of moving images and the study of subjects through moving images; (ii) to discuss the Library's moving image holdings, moving image-related events at the Library, and resource developments; and (iii) to cover developments in the moving image field which may impact upon the Library, particularly in the area of digital research. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here.

My interests include

Early and silent cinema ... the non-fiction film ... film as historical evidence ... moving image archiving ... early cinema audiences ... Antarctic exploration and film ... Kent County Cricket Club ... Renaissance drama ... Karel Capek ... the sociology of cinema ... newsreels ... cinemagazines ... First World War and film ... chess ... literary filmography ... Shakespeare on film, television and radio ... London ... Olympic Games history (especially the 1908 Games) ... sports history ... the development of communications media late 19th/early 20th century ... family history ... Anglo-American relations pre-First World War ... the history of educational film ... Charles Urban ... colour film systems, especially Kinemacolor ... Humphrey Jennings ... James Joyce and the Volta Cinematograph ... Victorian cinema ... the science and theory of memory ... 16th/17th English poetry ... military history ... databases ... multimedia and the Internet ... modern jazz ... historiography ... making lists of things ...

Downloads

I'm committed to making my research texts freely available wherever possible. Where I have been able to, I have included downloadable copies of papers I've written or the texts of talks I've given. Some are available on external sites, several of which are subscription-based services for university users only. Not everything I've written is available - some texts I don't have permission to republish, while for some of the talks either I no longer have the text or the talk was ad-libbed. I'll continue to add more such texts as and when I can.

Links

There are links throughout this site, given on the right-hand column of each page. Each points to a favourite site, an interest of mine, or something associated with the text on that page. They are given as pictures only, so just click on those that intrigue and see where they take you. All external links open in another window.

Web design

This site uses an open source web design by Andreas Viklund, and I'm very grateful to him.