Kelly Doyle
BA English and Psychology (MUN), MA (MUN), PhD (UBC) Interdisciplinary Study in Critical/Film Theory and Horror Film
Dr. Doyle grew up in Newfoundland, where she earned both a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) and a Master of Arts in English Language and Literature at Memorial University. After teaching courses in English Literature, poetry, and drama, she moved to British Columbia to pursue an Interdisciplinary PhD in the Critical and Creative Studies department of UBC in the Okanagan with a focus on her greatest love, scary movies, through an academic lens. During this time she taught Women’s Studies, University Writing, and English courses on short fiction and the Novel while writing and speaking on gender, race, sexuality, and identity politics in horror film. In 2012 she became known as the “Zombie Lady” by CBC news with all the inside info on the popularity and relevance of zombie films and as an extra in a low-budget Okanagan zombie film, Dr. Doyle continues to write about and refine her research in the horror genre. Currently, Dr. Doyle serves as a guest speaker for the Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival’s VHS Talks series and as a judge for its annual horror screenwriting competition. She holds memberships with the Popular Culture Association of the South and Gothic Studies and teaches English. Critical Theory, and Film Studies at KPU on the Surrey campus while serving as a copyeditor, reviewer, and Advisory Board member for Mise-en-Scene: A Journal of Film and Visual Narration.
Courses taught
- ENGL 1100: Introduction to University Writing
- ENGL 1202 (themed Contemporary Horror)
- ENGL 2350: Canadian Gothic from Coast to Coast
- ENGL 3300: Critical Theory
- ENGL 3305: Film Theory
- ENGL 3380: Popular Writing in Culture, Horror Writing in Popular Culture from Poe to King
- ENGL 4350: The Evolution of the Zombie in Horror Film (Upcoming)
Areas of Interest
I am keenly interested in theorizing and destabilizing the figure of the human, particularly in horror film. Gothic and Horror are genres invested in excavating and interrogating the monstrous, and not just in the world of fiction. These genres confront us with the transgression of boundaries and troubles the neat, ordered division of self and others into distinct and ontologically pure categories; these genres stress the liminality of ontological boundaries and for me, lead to ongoing and increasingly relevant questions about what it means to be human, and what it means to decide that others are not. Using posthuman philosophy my most recent research explored how the figure of the zombie in horror films from 2001 to the present exposes the limits of the discursive formulation of what it means to be human in the context of historical moments like 9/11. I have argued that exploring the limits of the human prompts a consideration of the human capacity for ethics and social justice since if boundaries do not hold between races, sexes, and species, it becomes more difficult to justify sexism, speciesism, and racism in the world outside the screen. I am primarily a film scholar and I have examined how femininity is coded problematically as monstrous but in confrontational and subversive ways in vampire, slasher, and werewolf films. More and more, my research interests lean towards posthumanism and critical animal studies as I continue to research film, and I maintain my ongoing interest in teaching rhetoric, writing, and analysis in both literature and film.
Reading, writing about, viewing, and analyzing horror is Dr. Doyle's hobby as well as research interest, but outside of that she can be found weightlifting, training calisthenics, or being active in nature.
Scholarly Work
- "Edible Humans: Undermining the Human in The Walking Dead and Other Zombie Television." Man-Eating Monsters: Anthropocentrism and Popular Culture, edited by Dina Khapaeva, 2020, pp. 97-113.
- "Feminist Overtones at the Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival." Mise-en-Scene: A Journal of Film and Visual Narration, vol. 5, no.1, 2020, pp. 31-36.
- "Masculinity, Human Hierarchy, and American Exceptionalism in World War Z." Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comics, Games, and Transmedia, edited by Robert Shail et al., Emerald Publishing, 2019, pp. 121-131.
- “Sleeping, Waking, Walking: The Lady in the Lake in The Haunting of Bly Manor.” Mise en Scene: The Journal of Film and Visual Narration, vol. 5, no.2, 2020, pp. 28-29.
- “Spectral Encounters, Sinister Warnings, and Uncanny Dreamscapes in Three Newfoundland Gothic Works.” Review Article. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies vol.27. no.2, 2013, 281-290. Print.
- Rev. of Hard Ol’ Spot: An Anthology of Atlantic Canadian Fiction, edited by Mike Heffernan. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, vol. 25, no.2, 2011, 283-286.
- Rev. of Safai, Ava Maria, Dir. Zip, performance by Gelareh Ghodrati, Crazy 8s, 2023. Mise en Scene: The Journal of Film and Visual Narration, 2024.
- Rev. of The Living and the Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies, by Gregory A. Waller. The Gothic Imagination. University of Stirling, 22 May 2011.
- “Gender and Consumption: Consumed by the Female Gender." Rev. of Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures and the Commercialisation of Everyday Life, edited by Casey, Emma, and Lydia Martins. Postscript: A Graduate Journal of Theory and Criticism: Theorizing the Mall. 2009.
- “The Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival Continues to Make its Mark.” Mise en Scene: The Journal of Film and Visual Narration, vol. 7, no.22, 2022, pp. 48-52.