Dr Alexander Sergeant
Dr. Alexander Sergeant is a acclaimed film theorist and historian specialising in popular media. His first monograph, Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema (SUNY Press, 2021) was nominated for several scholarly awards, including the BAFTSS award for Best First Book. He is the co-founder of Fantasy-Animation.org and co-host of the Fantasy/Animation podcast, a popular blog/podcast providing weekly discussion of the intertwining worlds of fantasy storytelling and the medium of animation. He is a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster.
Fantasy is the world’s oldest and most popular form of storytelling, forming the basis of successful transmedia franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Pokemon. Yet, it is a genre that has traditionally received scant attention within Film & Media Studies given the prejudicial attitudes it often receives.
My research addresses that oversight. I have produced definitive historical accounts of important works of fantasy within the development of film and television. I have also challenged long-standing theoretical assumptions by rethinking media through the lens of psychological and philosophical understandings of the imagination.
My research has been supported through external funding from the British Academy and the Association du Film d'Animation. I have also held presitigous research fellowships at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas, Austin) and the New York Public Library.
Selected Publications include:
Herbert Brenon: Forgotten Worlds from Silent Hollywood (Bloomsbury, forthcoming)
Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema (SUNY Press, August 2021)
Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (Routledge, 2018)
Saint Augustine’s Batman: Hope, Gotham and the City of God, Journal of Popular Culture (Accepted, Forthcoming)
Towards an Anti-Racist Syllabus: Inclusive Pedagogy in Animation Studies and Beyond”, Film Education Journal 6.1 (August 2023)
“Across the Narrow Screen: Televisual World-Building in Game of Thrones”, Screen 62, Issue 2 (August 2021)
“Hobbits on the Wall: “Frodo Lives!” as Counter-Cultural Symbol Formation”, Free Associations 77 (June 2020)