Tamar Hanstke

Tamar Hanstke is a PhD student at the Cinema Studies Institute. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Honours in Film Studies and a Master of Arts in Cinema and Media Studies from The University of British Columbia, and her research interests include Critical Disability Studies, Mad Studies, psychoanalytic film theory, star studies, queer film, and animation. Tamar's current dissertation research seeks to re-conceive classic psychoanalytic film theory through a Mad Studies lens in order to better understand how mental illness is depicted in contemporary film and television. Tamar previously served as the graduate student representative for the Film and Media Studies Association of Canada, and currently serves both as the graduate student representative for the Society For Cinema and Media Studies' Disability Caucus, and as the Vice President of the Cinema Studies Graduate Student Union at UofT.

Selected Work

• “Rosemary’s Trigger Warnings: Rethinking the Pedagogy of the Film Studies Classroom Post-#MeToo.” JCMS Teaching Dossier, “Pedagogies of Care in an Age of Anxiety”, 2025.
• “Can You Feel That (BDE) Energy: The Mentally Ill Comedy of Pete Davidson.” Stream: Interdisciplinary Journal of Communication 16.2, 2024.
• “Experiential Empathy through Feminist Observation: The Bond between Women and Animals in the Ecocinema of Andrea Arnold and Kelly Reichardt.” University of Toronto Quarterly 93.2, 2024.
• "What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Genre Film?: A Case for the Cinephilm as Subgenre." MA Thesis. The University of British Columbia, 2023. .
• "Sweet Smell of Censorship: The Artistic Productivity of the Censor-Auteur Relationship in Classical Hollywood’s Film Noir Cycle." Stream: Interdisciplinary Journal of Communication 14.2, 2022.
• "Lightning in a Bottle in Triplicate: Complicating Originality Conventions in Star Studies." Canadian Journal of Undergraduate Research, 2021.

Awards

• Congress Graduate Merit Award, 2023
• Film Studies Association of Canada Graduate Student Essay Prize, 2022
• SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Master's Award, 2021
• The University of British Columbia's AUSxURO Arts Undergraduate Research Award, 2021
• Mark Harris Memorial Scholarship in Film Studies, 2020