Participant Info

First Name
Lisa
Last Name
Duffy
Affiliation
Independent Scholar
Website URL
https://drlisaduffy.com/
Keywords
film history, television history, mid-century America, Hollywood, musicals, media history, American culture, 20th century, gender & sexuality, Disney, celebrity, stardom
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Dr. Lisa Duffy is a film historian specializing in Hollywood musicals. She has spent 5 years working in higher education as a lecturer, teaching associate, and department assistant. Prior to academic life, she spent nearly a decade at the Walt Disney Company in roles such as film publicity assistant, theme park hostess, and retail manager.

Dr. Duffy’s PhD thesis explored gender and sexuality in the fantasy spaces of classical Hollywood musicals, employing an interdisciplinary methodology to situate her findings in cultural, sociohistorical, and industrial contexts. She argued that musical fantasy sequences and settings allowed artists more freedom to probe social issues, like the shifting nature of gender roles, precarious positioning of sexuality, and the rise in popularity of psychoanalysis, acting as safeguards against the restrictive Production Code to provide subversive sites for exploration.

Her research and teaching interests include screen musicals, classical Hollywood cinema, American culture, Disney villains, mid-century stardom, and media industries.

Recent Publications

‘“Conceal, Don’t Feel, Put on a Show”: Musical Constructions in Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019),’ in The Frozen Phenomenon, eds. Rikke Schubart, Maja Rudloff and Helen Haswell, London: Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming 2022

Transworld Travel in Postwar Animated Musicals,’ Fantasy/Animation, January 2021

From the Evil Queen to Elsa: Camp Witches in Disney Films,’ Frames Cinema Journal, Issue 16, Winter 2019

‘The Aesthetic Space of London in Been So Long (2018),’ Garageland, Living British Cinema issue, Winter 2020

Walt Disney: Studio Head as Star,’ BAFTSS Performance and Stardom, July 2020

‘The Streisand Look,’ Arty, Issue 43, March 2020

“You Were Meant for Me” and the Myth of Entertainment,’ Gene Kelly Fans, November 2018

‘“Paris has ways of making people forget”: An American in Paris,’ Garageland, Spring 2017

Media Coverage
https://news.letterboxd.com/post/651481493886189568/spectacular-spectacular-moulin-rouge-20
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Art & Architectural History, Gender, Sexuality, Women, World War II