Dr Claire Jenkins

My teaching and research focus is on popular film and television texts, particularly through the lens of gender studies. Having written extensively about the representation of the family, gender and costume on-screen, my current research turns attention to the other side of the lens. My forthcoming monograph Hollywood's Women Directors: $100 Million Women (Routledge) considers the careers and experiences of women directors who have made a film that has grossed over $100 Million at the US domestic box office. This project writes women back into Hollywood history whilst also exploring how women have navigated successful careers in a particularly patriarchal industry. Research for this project has been supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, awarded in 2025. 

My interest in popular film and television underpins much of my teaching at the University of Leicester, where I contribute to modules across the Film Studies programmes covering American cinema, popular television, women's filmmaking, the Hollywood industry and feminist scholarship, as well as more creative modules where I support students in the creation of video essays.

Prior to joining the University of Leicester as Lecturer in Film and Television Studies in 2014 I taught at the University of Warwick, Bath Spa University and Sheffield Hallam University across a range of film, television and media modules.

My current research project is focused on Hollywood's women directors who have made over $100 million at the American domestic box office with a solo-directed, live action film. This work will be published in a monograph Hollywood's Women Directors: $100 Million Women that is under contract with Routledge. The monograph will make an original and unique contribution to studies of the Hollywood film industry and to studies of women's filmmaking. Women who direct mainstream, often low-brow texts are rarely the focus of academic scholarship. Ignoring these filmmakers erases an entire section of women's film history, and it is important to understand the way in which women have navigated successful careers in such a patriarchal industry in order to recognise the various ways in which sexism exists - and functions - within the Hollywood industry. This research is supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, awarded in April 2025.

My previous research has covered a range of topics including:

• The American Family on Screen
• Gender, costume and identity
• Sex and sexuality on screen
• Feminism and women's filmmaking in Hollywood

Current supervisions

• Joshua Edwards 'How do non-studio streaming service assimilate and deconstruct the established styles and practices of the American film industry?' (Primary Supervisor)
• Jayshree Khatri 'How has franchise film-making developed in the post-millennial era?' (Primary Supervisor)
• Chang Xu 'Female Filmmakers and the Representation of Chinese Americans in American Independent Films' (Secondary Supervisor)

Previous Supervisions (as primary supervisor)

• Alan Morton 'Beyond Disparity - Value as a metric of gender inequality in American independent cinema' 
• Zhiyao Liu 'Authorship and Contemporary Hollywood Franchise Cinema'

I welcome enquiries about PhD supervision on topics including the contemporary Hollywood film industry, American women filmmakers, the family on screen, sex and sexuality in mainstream film, costume and gender in the media

Current teaching:

• HA1005 Reading Television
• HA1324 American Film and Visual Culture
• HA2227 Independent Research Project: Video Essay
• HA3030 Women in Hollywood
• HA3401 Dissertation

I am course director for the MA Film Studies that is being relaunched for 2026 entry

Conference Organisation

• ‘Reflecting on 35 years since Penny Marshall’s Big’ one day symposium, University of Leicester, 19th May 2023.

Invited Papers and Talks

• Keynote address: ‘Whatever happened to Susan Seidelman?’. Desperately Seeking Susan @ 40 Conference: A celebration of female friendship on film, University of Wales, Trinity St David, Swansea, 10-11th April 2025.
• ‘Hollywood and the changing American Family, 1990 to present’. Study for the Centre for the Americas, Queen’s University Belfast, 8th November 2017.
• ‘Family Dysfunction and the Action Melodrama’. Family Matters 2.0: The American Family in Transition, University of Regensburg, Germany, 27th-28th November 2015
• ‘‘I’m saving the world, I need a decent shirt’: Masculinity, sexuality and costume in the new Doctor Who’. Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, Sunderland University, 19th November 2012.
• ‘Suburban Heroes: race and the superhero family’. Imagined Power: Superhero Comics and the American Experience, Rollins College, Florida, USA, 17-20th March 2010.
• ‘About a Boy: A comparative analysis of fathers and sons in mainstream British and American film’ (public lecture as Visiting Scholar) Rollins College, Florida, USA, 17th March 2010.
  

PhD Film and Television Studies University of Warwick, 2009
MA Film Studies University of Reading, 2005
BA (hons) Media Arts Royal Holloway, University of London, 2003

Fellow of Advance HE/The Higher Education Academy since February 2015

Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in HE University of Leicester, 2016