Staff Profile

Professor Jo Fox

(email at j.c.fox@durham.ac.uk)

Jo Fox is a specialist in the history of film and propaganda in twentieth-century Europe. She has published on the cinematic cultures of Britain and Germany during the Second World War, exploring the connections between film, propaganda and popular opinion. She is currently working on projects associated with the 'Father of Documentary', John Grierson, and his influence on international film and on conceptions of propaganda in democratic states. She is a member of the Council for the International Association for Media and History. Jo Fox is a National Teaching Fellow (2007).

Research Interests

• Film history
• Nazi Germany
• The history of propaganda in the twentieth century
• The Second World War
• Twentieth-century European history

Publications

Books: authored

• 2007 Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II Cinema, Berg, 358 pp.
• 2000 Filming Women in the Third Reich, Berg, 268 pp.

Books: edited

• 2012 (co-edited with Welch, David) Justifying War. Propaganda, Politics and the Modern Age, Palgrave, 397 pp.

Essays in edited volumes

• 2007 'German cinema and the United Kingdom, 1933-45', in Roel Vande Winkel & David Welch (eds.), Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of the Third Reich Cinema, Palgrave, pp. 289-305
• 2005 ''The mediator': images of radio in wartime feature film in Britain and Germany', in Mark Connelly & David Welch (eds.), War and the Media. Reportage and Propaganda 1900-2003, I.B.Tauris, pp. 92-112
• 2005 'Winston Churchill and the 'men of destiny': reflections on leadership and the role of the Prime Minister in the British wartime feature films', in Richard Toye & Julie Gottlieb (eds.), Making Reputations. Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics, I.B. Tauris, pp. 92-108

Journal papers: academic

• Published 'Careless Talk: Tensions within British Domestic Propaganda during the Second World War', Journal of British Studies 51, pp. 936-966
• 2013 'To Be a Woman: Women in Documentary Film Production, 1929-50', Journal of British Cinema and Television pp.
• 2011 'Propaganda and the Flight of Rudolf Hess, 1941-45', Journal of Modern History 83, pp. 78-110
• 2009 '"Everyday Heroines:" Nazi Visions of Motherhood in Mutterliebe (1939) and Annelie (1941)', Historical Reflections/ Réflexions Historiques 35, pp. 21-39
• 2006 'Millions Like Us? Accented Language and the 'Ordinary' in British Films of the Second World War', Journal of British Studies 45, pp. 819-845
• 2005 'John Grierson, his 'documentary boys' and the British Ministry of Information, 1939-1942', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25, pp. 345-369
• 2004 'Resistance and the Third Reich', Journal of Contemporary History 39, pp. 271-285
• 2003 ''Heavy hands and light touches': approaches to the study of cinematic culture in the Third Reich', History Compass pp.

Teaching Areas

• Propaganda in the twentieth century
• Twentieth century Europe