Associate Professor Julia Erhart

A/Prof. Julia Erhart is an internationally recognised feminist film scholar and expert in the fields of feminist and LGBTQ-themed media. She is the author of numerous research articles on these subjects and three sole-authored research monographs: Gendering History on Screen: Women Filmmakers and Historical Films (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2018), Gillian Armstrong: Popular, Sensual & Ethical Cinema (Visionaries, Edinburgh, 2020), and The Children’s Hour (Queer Film Classics, McGill-Queen's UP, 2024). 

A/Prof. Erhart has a track record of data-driven research examining gender equity and the Australian screen industry. Her research has appeared in Studies in Australasian Cinema, Feminist Media Studies, and in edited collections such as Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries (Palgrave, 2023).

A/Prof. Erhart has an established reputation for research on women’s media authorship. Her book, Gendering History on Screen: Women Filmmakers and Historical Films (2018) examines innovations by women filmmakers in contemporary biopics, war films, and movies about the “war on terror”. Her monograph Gillian Armstrong: popular, sensual & ethical cinema (2020) analyses prominent themes in Armstrong’s work, including her reworking of popular Australian genres. Further subjects Julia has produced research about include feminist first-person documentaries and film directors Jane Campion and Agnes Varda.

A/Prof. Erhart's research on LGBTQ-themed media has appeared in numerous anthologies including Queer TV in the Twenty-First Century (McFarland, 2016), Invented Lives, Imagined Communities: Biopics and American National Identity (SUNY, 2016), Queer Love in Film and Television (Palgrave, 2013), and in journals which include Continuum, Continuum, a/b: Auto/Biography, Screen, and Camera Obscura. Her newest book explores the production and reception circumstances surrounding The Children’s Hour, the first commercial American film to feature a lesbian character in a leading role.

A/Prof. Erhart is the recipient of a grant from the Australian Academy of the Humanities (2016), a Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning from the Australian Office for Learning and Teaching (2014), and a fellowship from Fulbright (2000). She is a committed, passionate, and nationally recognised teacher. In addition the OLT Citation, she has received both the Vice-Chancellor's award and the Faculty award for Excellence in Teaching (both in 2012, and, as a co-recipient, in 2023) and has been the recipient of two competitive teaching grants, 'Embedding Transition Pedagogy Principles in First Year' and, with a colleague, a 'Teaching and Learning Innovation' grant.

• Gender equity and the Australian screen industry
• LGBTQ-themed film and television
• Gender and film genre
• Female and queer film and television authorship
• Biopics and other historical film genres
• Australian media

• Richard Jasek - Industry internship with the South Australian Film Corporation 2021
• Martin Potter - Vice Chancellor’s Award for Doctoral Thesis Excellence 2015
• Kath Dooley - School of Humanities and Creative Arts Award for Part-time Teaching 2013

Principal Supervisions

2024 Social, economic and cultural benefit of reopening cinemas in Saudi Arabia

2024 Deadly Earnest and the Australian Television Horror Host, 1959-1978

2023 Gender and comedy in post-Bridesmaids Hollywood cinema: the rise and fall of the Womance Comedy

2023 Precarity, public value and power economies: the effects of industrial change on small screen content creators - a view from behind the lens

2020 Memorable and ambiguous: the dramaturgy of violence in complex television serial drama

2013 After Romance: portrayals of the body in films by Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, and Marina de Van; a creative exploration

2008 Behold His mighty hand! A critical examination of the Biblical cinema of Cecil b. DeMille: a film studies offering to religious education

1999 The Book, the print, the artist and the digital era: the history and developments of book production and artists' use of the print medium

Associate supervisions

2024 Recognising cinematography: the industrial, technical and aesthetic role of the cinematographer with reference to films directed by Gillian Armstrong

2020 A history of educational computing and software development for Australian schools 1970 - 1990

2016 Beyond Bharatanatyam: Re-visions, Ruptures and Resistance in the Feminist Choreographies of Anita Ratnam and Mallika Sarabhai

2015 Contemporary Spanish Women Cineastes: Constructing a feminine memory of the Spanish Civil War, Francoism and the Transition period through twenty-first century fiction films and documentaries

2014 Big Stories, Small Towns: a participatory and web-based documentary and exegesis

2006 Explosions in the narrative action films with Lacan

2006 Everyday matters: my body of work in experimental video