Dr David Foster
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Lecturer
Areas of interest
I am primarily a visual artist. I make artwork about my experience of and relationship with place, land, and the natural world. I work mainly with photography, especially double-exposure photography, but also with video, film, text, and found objects. In recent years my practice has been funded by several grants from Arts Council England, and solo exhibitions of my work have been held in Oxford, Suffolk, Dorset and Sussex.
My teaching at Reading is informed by my longstanding interest in art cinema, experimental and visionary film, and what might be called psychogeographic film. Filmmakers whose work I am particularly interested in, and have taught on here at Reading, include Michael Haneke, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Patrick Keiller, Stan Brakhage and Peter Gidal.
I have wide and eclectic research interests, and I have published in the areas of film, photography, visual art, theatre, literature and music, often in connection to the work of Samuel Beckett.
Teaching
I teach (or have taught) on the following undergraduate and postgraduate modules:
- Film Forms and Cultures (Convenor)
- Dissertation: Film and Theatre (Convenor)
- Creative Research Project (Convenor)
- Academic Research Skills (Convenor)
- Extended Essay (Convenor)
- Independent Essay (Convenor)
- Screen Storytelling and Criticism
- Approaches to Film
- Film Practice or Dissertation
- Dissertation or Practical Project
- Advanced Practical Project: Film/TV
- World Cinema: Presenting and Representing Reality
- Alternative Forms in Film
- Introduction to Film
- Introduction to Television
Selected publications
Foster, D. (2014), ‘Atonality and Eternity: The Musical Language of Comédie’, in SJ. Bailes and N. Till (eds.), Beckett and Musicality (Farnham: Ashgate Press), pp. 85-105.
Foster, D. (2014), ‘Threshold Faces: The Physiognomy of Comédie’, Moving Image Review and Art Journal, 3:2, pp. 194-207. ISSN: 2045-6298.
Foster, D. (2013), ‘The Artist-Photographer and the Problem of Commentary’, in R. Miller, J. Carson and T. Wilkie (eds.), The Reflexive Photographer (Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc), pp. 227-61.
Foster, D. (2013), ‘Danse Macabre: Comédie’s Cinematic Antecedents’, Studies in European Cinema, 10:2, pp. 89-102. ISSN: 1741-1548.
Foster, D. (2013), ‘Between Beyonds: Play’s Urns and their Exhabitants’, Samuel Beckett Today /Aujourd’hui, 25, pp. 213-25. ISSN: 0927-3131.
Foster, D. (2012), ‘Spatial Aesthetics in the Film Adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Comédie’, Screen, 53:2, pp. 105-17. ISSN: 0036-9543.
Foster, D. (2012), ‘Becoming Present, Becoming Absent: Movement and Visual Form in the Film Adaptation of Comédie’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 21:2, pp. 157-80. ISSN: 0309-5207.