Kate J. Russell

Kate J. Russell is a PhD candidate in Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto, where she also completed her Masters in Cinema Studies. Her SSHRC-funded dissertation project focuses on John Waters and the comedic potential of cult spectatorship. Her interests more broadly include gross-out comedy, cult cinema, and abjection. Her essay “The Cinematic Pandemonium of William Castle and John Waters” appears in ReFocus: The Films of William Castle (University of Edinburgh Press, 2018). She currently serves as co-chair for the Toronto Film and Media Seminar.

Awards

• 2020 Judith Yaross Lee Publication Grant, American Humor Studies Association
• 2018-19 Graduate Research Grant for the Study of the United States, Centre for the Study of the United States, University of Toronto
• 2018 Graduate Student Essay Prize, Comedy and Humor SIG, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
• 2018-2021 SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Doctoral Scholarship

Selected Work

• “The Cinematic Pandemonium of William Castle and John Waters," In ReFocus: The Films of William Castle, ed. Murray Leeder. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2018.