Murray Leeder
Title: Instructor
Building: Ashdown
Email: m.leeder@uwinnipeg.ca
Biography:
Murray Leeder holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Mediations (Visual Cultures) from Carleton University. The main line of his research concerns the supernatural in film, literature and media, and he has published extensively on ghosts, spiritualism and psychical research. He has also written about a wide range of other topics including Bob Dylan, and Star Trek. He was a cofounder of the Horror Studies Special Interest Group for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and chaired it from 2016 to 2019. He is also the author of Plague of Ice (2003) and Son of Thunder (2006) and numerous published short stories.
Teaching Areas:
Genre (including horror, fantasy, the Western, science fiction, teen film), film history, film authorship, national cinema, graphic novels, digital literature, documentary
Courses:
(F) ENGL-3719-250/290: LITERATURE OF MANITOBA
(FW) ENGL-3190-050: LITERATURE AND FILM
Publications:
Books Authored
Leeder, Murray. Horror Film: A Critical Introduction. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018 (Film Genres series).
Leeder Murray. The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Leeder, Murray. Halloween. Auteur Press, 2014 (Devil’s Advocates series).
Books Edited
Leeder, Murray, ed. ReFocus: The Films of William Castle. Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
Leeder, Murray, ed. Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era. Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
Journal Issues Edited
Larke-Walsh, George S. and Murray Leeder, eds. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies Teaching Dossier. Special issue: “Online Teaching in Cinema and Media Studies: Revised.” Summer 2021.
Larke-Walsh, George S. and Murray Leeder, eds. Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier. Special issue: “Online Teaching in Cinema and Media Studies.” Winter/Spring 2015.
Articles in Refereed Journals
Leeder, Murray. “Bones and Voices: Doreen Manuel’s These Walls.” Monstrum 5.2 (2022): 134-9.
Leeder, Murray. “The Scene of Haunting in Silent Adaptations of A Christmas Carol.” Journal of Communication and Languages 53 (2020): 57-72. Special Issue: “Photography, Cinema and the Ghostly.”
Leeder, Murray. “Cowboy Gothic: Haunting and Memorialization in High Plains Drifter.” Film Journal 5 (2019): 93-102. Special Issue: “Screening the Supernatural.”
Leeder, Murray. “X-Ray (1981), the Final Woman and the Medical Slasher Film.” Postmodern Culture 28.1 (2017): n.p. Special Issue: “Revisiting the Final Girl.”
Leeder, Murray. “Victorian Science and Spiritualism in The Legend of Hell House.” Horror Studies 5.1 (2014): 31-46.
Leeder, Murray. “Ghostwatch and the Haunting of Media.” Horror Studies 4.2 (2013): 177-90. Special issue: “Paranormal TV.”
Leeder, Murray. “Haunting and Minstrelsy in Bob Dylan’s Masked and Anonymous.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 40.4 (2012): 181-91.
Leeder, Murray. “Ghost-Seeing and Detection in Stir of Echoes.” Clues: A Journal of Detection 30.2 (2012): 76-88. Special issue: “Paranormal Mysteries.”
Leeder, Murray. “Collective Screams: William Castle and the Gimmick Film.” Journal of Popular Culture 44.4 (2011): 774-96.
Leeder, Murray. “M. Robert-Houdin Goes to Algeria: Spectatorship and Panic in Illusion and Early Cinema.” Early Popular Visual Culture 8.2 (2010): 187-203.
Leeder, Murray. “Skeletons Sail an Etheric Ocean: Approaching the Ghost in John Carpenter’s The Fog.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 37.2 (2009): 70-9.
Leeder, Murray and Ira Wells. “Dylan’s Floods.” Popular Music and Society 32.2 (2009): 211-27. Special issue: “Bob Dylan and Place.”
Leeder, Murray. “Forget Peter Vincent: Nostalgia, Self-Reflexivity and the Genre Past in Fright Night.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 36.4 (2009): 190-99.
Leeder, Murray. “The Fall of the House of Meaning: Between Static and Slime in Poltergeist.” Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 5 (2008): 3-7.
Leeder, Murray. “Closet and Confessional: Television and Hybridity in Mambo Italiano.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 15.1 (Spring 2006): 63-74.
Chapters in Books
Leeder, Murray. “Night Walking: The Oneiric Horror Cinema.” Gothic Dreams and Nightmares. Ed. Carol Margaret Davison. Manchester University Press, TBA. [In Press]
Leeder, Murray. “Necrolennonolatry.” Speaking Words of Wisdom: The Beatles and Religion. Ed. Michael McGowan. Penn State University Press, 2024. [In Press]
Leeder, Murray. “‘Mere Symbolic Ectoplasm’: The Ectoplasmic Screen.” The Art of Ectoplasm: Encounters with Winnipeg’s Ghost Photographs. Ed. Serena Keshavjee. University of Manitoba Press, 2023. 190-207. [In Press]
Leeder, Murray. “Color Me Blood Red (1965).” Screening American Independent Film. Eds. W.D. Phillips and Justin Wyatt. Routledge, 2023. 96-103.
Leeder, Murray with André Loiselle. “Canadian Vampires.” Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. Ed. Simon Bacon. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “Can(n)on Fodder: Star Trek Nemesis and the Remans.” Nosferatu in the 21st Century: A Critical Study. Ed. Simon Bacon. University of Liverpool Press, 2022. 41-53.
Leeder, Murray. “Northern Frights: Canadian Horror in the 21st Century.” Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium. Eds. Lee Carruthers and Charles Tepperman. McGill-Queens University Press, 2022. 150-66.
Leeder, Murray. “Dracula in New York: The Comic, Anachronistic Vampire in Love at First Bite and Vamps.” Spoofing the Vampire: Essays on Comedy and Genre in Vampire Films. Ed. Simon Bacon. McFarland Press, 2022. 46-56.
Leeder, Murray. “Indigeneity as Monstrosity in The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.” Monstrosity, Identity, and Music: Mediating Uncanny Creatures from Frankenstein to Videogames. Eds. Alexis Luko and James K. Wright. Bloomsbury, 2022. 186-97.
Leeder, Murray. “But Is It Star Trek?: Prestige, Fandom and the Return of Star Trek to Television.” Prestige Television: Cultural and Artistic Value in Twenty-First-Century America. Eds. Amanda Keeler and Seth Friedman. Rutgers University Press, 2022. 55-73.
Leeder, Murray. “Voices and Vaults: Pillow of Death.” ReFocus: The Films of Wallace Fox. Ed. Joanna Hearn and Gary D. Rhodes. Edinburgh University Press, 2022. 116-30.
Leeder, Murray. “Star Trek: Generations.” The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek. Eds. Leimar Garcia-Siino, Sabrina Mittermeier and Stefan Rabitsch. Routledge, 2022. 122-6.
Leeder, Murray. “The Birth of an Evil Thought: The Gothic in Silent-Era Cinema.” Twentieth Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Eds. Bernice M. Murphy and Sorcha Ni Fhlainn. Edinburgh University Press, 2022. 83-98.
Leeder, Murray. “Spiritualism and American Cinema: Unseen Forces.” Magic: A Companion. Ed. Katharina Rein. Peter Lang, 2022. 59-67.
Leeder, Murray. “If I Were a Carpenter: Prestige and Authorship in the Halloween Franchise.” Horror Franchise Cinema. Eds. William Proctor and Mark McKenna. Routledge, 2021. 66-80.
Leeder, Murray. “Narration and Damnation in Angel Heart.” Giving the Devil His Due: Satan & Cinema. Eds. Regina Hansen and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Fordham University Press, 2021. 120-35.
Leeder, Murray. “Roger Corman.” The Palgrave Handbook to the Contemporary Gothic. Ed. Clive Bloom. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 765-79.
Leeder, Murray. “Skeletons.” Monsters: A Companion. Ed. Simon Bacon. Peter Lang, 2020. 183-190.
Leeder, Murray. “Confessions of an Anti-Fan: Voyager, Fandom and Dislike.” Exploring Star Trek: Voyager: Critical Essays. Ed. Robert L. Lively. McFarland Press, 2020. 248-64.
Leeder, Murray. “Pessimism and the Limits of Knowledge—It Follows (Mitchell, 2014).” Horror: A Companion.Ed. Simon Bacon. Peter Lang, 2019. 11-7.
Leeder, Murray. “Contemporary Ghosts.” Twenty-First Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Eds. Xavier Aldana Reyes and Maisha Wester. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. 131-43.
Leeder, Murray. “Paperback Necronomicon: Occultism and World-Building in John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness.” Terrifying Texts: Essays on Books of Good and Evil in Horror Cinema. Eds. Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin van Riper. McFarland Press, 2018. 33-43.
Leeder, Murray. “Collective Screams: William Castle and the Gimmick Film.” ReFocus: The Films of William Castle. 76-98. [Reprint]
Leeder, Murray. “Screening the Spectre: Ghosts on Film.” Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story. Eds. Scott Brewster and Luke Thurston. Routledge, 2017. 351-60.
Leeder, Murray. “Poe/Lovecraft/Corman: The Case of The Haunted Palace (1963).” The Lovecraftian Poe: Essays on Influence, Reception, Interpretation, and Transformation. Ed. Sean Moreland. Lehigh University Press, 2017. 163-77.
Leeder, Murray. “Victor Halperin.” Lost Souls of Horror and the Gothic: Fifty-four Neglected Authors, Actors, Artists and Others. Eds. Bernice M. Murphy and Elizabeth McCarthy. McFarland Press, 2016. 104-6.
Leeder, Murray. “The Humor of William Castle’s Gimmick Films.” The Laughing Dead: The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland. Eds. Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 87-101.
Leeder, Murray. “‘Staying Young is Getting Old’: Youth and Immortality in Vamps.” ReFocus: The Films of Amy Heckerling. Eds. Timothy Shary and Frances Smith. Edinburgh University Press, 2016. 154-69.
Leeder, Murray. “‘Visualizing the Phantoms of the Imagination’: Projecting the Haunted Minds of Modernity.” Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era. 39-57.
Leeder, Murray. “Supernatural Trek?: Star Trek and the Re-Enchantment of the World.” The Star Trek Universe: Franchising the Final Frontier. Ed. Douglas Brode. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. 1-14.
Aalya Ahmad and Murray Leeder. “The Sick Rose: Rabid and the Female Science Vampire.” Dracula’s Daughters: The Female Vampire on Film. Eds. Leah Deyneka and Douglas Bode. Scarecrow Press, 2014. 235-52.
Leeder, Murray. “A Tale of Three Draculas: Teaching Genre Evolution and Generic Conventions.” The Vampire Goes to College: Essays on Teaching the Undead. Ed. Lisa Neváraz. McFarland, 2013. 146-53.
Leeder, Murray. “‘A Species of One’: The Atavistic Vampire from Dracula to The Wisdom of Crocodiles.” Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic. Eds. Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013. 15-28.
Leeder, Murray. “Eroticism and Death: The Skeleton in the Trick Film.” Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema. Eds. Marta Braun, Charlie Keil, Rob King, Paul Moore and Louis Pelletier. John Libbey, 2012. 176-83.
Other Writings
Leeder, Murray. “Fade to Green: Ang Lee’s Hulk.” Fantastic Flops. Ed. Christopher McGlothlin. Ghost Show Press, TBA.
Leeder, Murray. “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: Red Suit, Red Planet.” Subversive Sci-Fi: Reflections on Futuristic Films That Broke the Rules. Ed. Christopher McGlothlin. Ghost Show Press, 2023. 15-19.
Leeder, Murray. “Every Movie is a Ghost Story: An Interview with Gemma Files.” Included in Experimental Film by Gemma Files, edition from Midworld Press, 2021. Reprint.
Leeder, Murray. “Magic and Meat: Herschell Gordon Lewis’s The Wizard of Gore (1970).” Transgressive Horror—Reflections on Scare Films that Broke the Rules. Ed. Christopher McGlothlin. Ghost Show Press, 2021. 59-62.
Leeder, Murray. “Demons and Demonization: Filming the Anti-Dungeons & Dragons Hysteria.” Luma—Film & Media Art Quarterly 23 (2021): n.p.
Conway, Alana and Murray Leeder. “Star Trek and Human Rights.” The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (2020): n.p.
Leeder, Murray.“‘A New Chivalry’: The Calgary Stampede on Film.” Luma—Film & Media Art Quarterly 20 (2020): n.p.
Leeder, Murray.“Choose Your Own Voyage to Adventure: Exploring a Forgotten Chapter of Star Trek Children’s Media.” Star Trek (Official Site) (2020): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “The Monsters Are Due in Calgary: Red Letter Day and the Suburban Gothic.” Luma—Film & Media Art Quarterly 19 (2020): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “Interview: Duncan Regehr on His Star Trek Roles: Ghost Lover and Resistance Leader.” Trekmovie.com (2020): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “The Surprising Connections Between Star Trek and Bob Dylan.” Star Trek (Official Site) (2019): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “Watching Star Trek: Generations Spoiled.” Star Trek (Official Site) (2019): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “Time Record: A Memoir of Teenage Cinephilia by VCR.” Luma—Film & Media Art Quarterly 16 (2019): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “A Nightmare at the Opera: Horror, Stardom and the 1989 Phantom of the Opera.” The Phantom on Film (2018): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “Nobody’s Phantom.” The Phantom on Film (2018): n.p.
Conway, Alana and Murray Leeder. “Blood on the Poplars: Alien Thunder (1974) and the Story of Almighty Voice.” Luma—Film & Media Art Quarterly 12 (2018): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “Every Movie is a Ghost Story: An Interview with Gemma Files.” Luma—Film & Media Art Quarterly 6 (2016): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. Essay on Halloween (1978) for the National Film Registry, Library of Congress (February 2016): n.p.
Leeder, Murray. “Ektoplasm-o-vision! with Guy Maddin.” Luma—Film & Media Art Quarterly 1 (2015): n.p.