Kim Wilkins

• Moss-Wellington, Wyatt & Wilkins, Kim (2026). Afterwords, Afterbodies. In Moss-Wellington, Wyatt & Wilkins, Kim (Ed.), The Body Swap Film. Berghahn Books. ISSN 9781836956709. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  An enduring yet underexamined tradition in popular cinema, body swap narratives have captivated audiences across cultures and genres. This volume offers the first study of the ‘body swap' film, examining notable examples such as the Freaky Friday films alongside comedies, horrors, and hybrid forms shaped by bodily transformation. Extending beyond cinema, Contributors trace the trope's evolution across television, videogames, digital platforms, online identity practices, and avatar relationships. Grounded in film studies yet interdisciplinary in scope, the collection engages gender theory, race theory, trans scholarship, transnational media studies, and philosophy to illuminate how body swapping reshapes understandings of identity, embodiment, and power in global media culture.

• Wilkins, Kim (2026). ‘I’m Turning into My Mother!’ Freaky Fridays from Archetype to Anecdote. In Moss-Wellington, Wyatt & Wilkins, Kim (Ed.), The Body Swap Film. Berghahn Books. ISSN 9781836956709. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  An enduring yet underexamined tradition in popular cinema, body swap narratives have captivated audiences across cultures and genres. This volume offers the first study of the ‘body swap' film, examining notable examples such as the Freaky Friday films alongside comedies, horrors, and hybrid forms shaped by bodily transformation. Extending beyond cinema, Contributors trace the trope's evolution across television, videogames, digital platforms, online identity practices, and avatar relationships. Grounded in film studies yet interdisciplinary in scope, the collection engages gender theory, race theory, trans scholarship, transnational media studies, and philosophy to illuminate how body swapping reshapes understandings of identity, embodiment, and power in global media culture.

• Moss-Wellington, Wyatt & Wilkins, Kim (2026). Introduction: Body Swapping in, on, and as Film. In Moss-Wellington, Wyatt & Wilkins, Kim (Ed.), The Body Swap Film. Berghahn Books. ISSN 9781836956709. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  An enduring yet underexamined tradition in popular cinema, body swap narratives have captivated audiences across cultures and genres. This volume offers the first study of the ‘body swap' film, examining notable examples such as the Freaky Friday films alongside comedies, horrors, and hybrid forms shaped by bodily transformation. Extending beyond cinema, Contributors trace the trope's evolution across television, videogames, digital platforms, online identity practices, and avatar relationships. Grounded in film studies yet interdisciplinary in scope, the collection engages gender theory, race theory, trans scholarship, transnational media studies, and philosophy to illuminate how body swapping reshapes understandings of identity, embodiment, and power in global media culture.

• Wilkins, Kim (2026). r. In Athanasiou-Krikelis, Lissi & Toth, Josh (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Metafiction. Routledge. ISSN 9781032538464. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The Routledge Companion to Metafiction examines metafiction’s history and trajectory and identifies its impact across all media and levels of culture. Far from representing metafiction as a self-enclosed hermeneutic project of high postmodernism, the collection foregrounds metafiction’s engagement with politics, history, culture, and identity across various points in literary time. The volume examines metafiction in a variety of genres and fields, such as graphic novels, poetry, film, children’s literature, video games, Indigenous storytelling, critical and queer theory, and more. Collectively, the chapters enrich and broaden existing scholarship while charting new directions for inquiry. At a time when popular culture increasingly embraces metafictional practices—from gaming to commercials to cartoons—the companion highlights the breadth of metafiction’s applications and theories, opens new pathways of research, and expands critical perspectives.

• Vermeulen, Timotheus & Wilkins, Kim (2024). Metamodern pastiche Introduction. Screen. ISSN 0036-9543. 65(1), p. 116–120. doi: 10.1093/screen/hjae008. Full text in Research Archive
• Vermeulen, Timotheus & Wilkins, Kim (2024). Genre pastiche and Community. Screen. ISSN 0036-9543. 65(1), p. 160–168. doi: 10.1093/screen/hjae013. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2023). Jonze, Spike (1969-), An Introduction to. Contemporary Literary Criticism. ISSN 0091-3421. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2023). "Road Films and National Identity." (Chapter reprint from American Eccentric Cinema). Contemporary Literary Criticism. ISSN 0091-3421. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2022). Empathetic Effort in Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Bernie. In Wilkins, Kim & Vermeulen, Timotheus (Ed.), Refocus: The Films of Richard Linklater. Edinburgh University Press. ISSN 9781474493826. p. 157–175. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim & Vermeulen, Timotheus (2022). Introduction: Linklater's Itinerant Oeuvre. In Wilkins, Kim & Vermeulen, Timotheus (Ed.), Refocus: The Films of Richard Linklater. Edinburgh University Press. ISSN 9781474493826. p. 123–142. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2022). Familiar Spectacles: Nightclub Space in TV Berlin. Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2021). Gentrification by Genre? The Berlin Rom-com. NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies (EJMS). 1(#Solidarity), p. 27–54. doi: 10.25969/mediarep/16264. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Over the past few decades, there has been a significant uptick in the number of people relocating to Berlin. This influx is most of-ten viewed as a response to rebranding the reunified German capi-tal as a creative city – a tactic that foregrounded Berlin’s longstand-ing reputation for cheap rent, liberal attitudes, artistic culture, and vibrant nightlife. The housing market responded as vacancies plummeted while rent prices skyrocketed. Alongside the widely lamented changing face of the reunified capital, the spike in rent prices is one tangible outcome of Berlin’s rapid gentrification. This essay examines the aesthetics of gentrifying Berlin through an ex-amination of a genre commonly associated with the imperatives of gentrification: the romantic comedy. Unlike other cinema tradi-tions associated with urban space, the romcom is commonly un-derstood as a genre that frames the city as a site of aspirational af-fluence and consumerism. This framing has, to date, overwhelm-ingly referred to romcoms produced in the American context. Through analyses of three romcoms set in Berlin – Germany’s highest grossing romcom to date KEINOHRHASEN (‘Rabbit With-out Ears’, Schweiger, 2007); the 2019 installment in Emmanuel Benbihy’s ‘City of Love’ anthology film series, BERLIN, I LOVE YOU and Doris Dörrie’s GLÜCK (‘Bliss’, 2012) this essay interro-gates whether romcoms set in Berlin can be, as has been claimed of their US counterparts, understood as a genre of gentrification.

• Wilkins, Kim (2021). Lotte in Weimar: Sex and Poverty in Babylon Berlin. Cinephile. ISSN 1712-9265. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2021). Indie Courtship: Pursuing the American New Wave. In Abrams, Nathan & Frame, Gregory (Ed.), New Wave, New Hollywood:Reassessment, Recovery, and Legacy. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781501360404. p. 201–220. doi: 10.5040/9781501360374.ch-011. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2021). Creative resistance: Noah Baumbach’s literary filmography. Textual Practice. ISSN 0950-236X. 35(10), p. 1629–1646. doi: 10.1080/0950236X.2021.1965293. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  It is frequently asserted in both film scholarship and criticism that Noah Baumbach is a literary filmmaker. While Baumbach’s oeuvre certainly showcases his interest in literature through a range of stylistic techniques, this article presents the case that Baumbach projects his literary filmmaking as an authorial trademark in line with Timothy Corrigan’s conceptualisation of contemporary auteurism. By critically positioning himself as an auteur, Baumbach seemingly defies insurgent pushes toward broad discourses of neoliberal creativity and attendant preoccupations with entrepreneurialism, adaptability, and flexibility. This strategy resonates with the narratives presented in Baumbach’s films, which overwhelmingly centre on the plights of medium-specific artists in crisis. As such, at first glance, Baumbach’s auteurist positioning and his narrative and thematic preoccupation with artists unfulfilled by the promises of the creative class could be read as resistance to neoliberal creativity per se. Yet, as an auteur within the highly marketable American indie tradition, Baumbach’s literary filmmaking ultimately facilitates his participation in the neoliberal creative practices that his discursive auteurist positioning and film narratives appear to resist.

• Wilkins, Kim (2021). Babylon Berlin’s bifocal gaze. Screen. ISSN 0036-9543. 62(2), p. 135–155. doi: 10.1093/screen/hjab019. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2019). Celebrating 20 Years of Spike Jonze’s ‘Being John Malkovich. Edinburgh University Press Blog. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2019). "You can be John Malkovich." Celebrity, Absurdity, and Convention in Being John Malkovich. In Wilkins, Kim & Moss-Wellington, Wyatt (Ed.), ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze. Edinburgh University Press. ISSN 9781474447621. p. 67–85. doi: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474447621.003.0005. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim & Moss-Wellington, Wyatt (2019). Jonze Between the Lines. In Wilkins, Kim & Moss-Wellington, Wyatt (Ed.), ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze. Edinburgh University Press. ISSN 9781474447621. p. 1–12. doi: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474447621.003.0001. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2019). These Violent Delights: Navigating Westworld as “Quality” Television. In Goody, Alex & Mackay, Antonia (Ed.), Reading Westworld. Palgrave Macmillan. ISSN 9783030145156. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-14515-6_2. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2018). Assembled Worlds: Intertextuality and Sincerity in the films of Wes Anderson. Texas Studies in Literature and Language. ISSN 0040-4691. 60(2), p. 151–173. doi: 10.7560/tsll60203. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2017). ‘I don’t know who I am most of the time’: Constructed Identity in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. Film Criticism. ISSN 0163-5069. 41(1). doi: 10.3998/fc.13761232.0041.103. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  I'm Not There presents a radical departure from the traditional biopic. Rather than focusing on individual agency as a conduit of history, I'm Not There uses the figure of Bob Dylan as a conduit for identity per se. I'm Not There explores the irreducibility of identity by highlighting biopic representation as a textual construct through intertextual allusion, quotation, and pastiche.

• Wilkins, Kim (2016). This, please, cannot be that’: The Constructed World of P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia. Sydney Studies in English. ISSN 0156-5419. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2014). Cast of Characters: Wes Anderson and Pure Cinematic Characterization. In Peter, Kunze (Eds.), The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon. Palgrave Macmillan. ISSN 9781349486922. doi: 10.1057/9781137403124_3. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2013). The Sounds of Silence: Hyper-Dialogue and American Eccentricity. New Review of Film and Television Studies. ISSN 1740-0309. doi: 10.1080/17400309.2013.848736. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2013). Ortner, Sherry B., Not Hollywood: Independent Film at the Twilight of the American Dream.". Media International Australia: Incorporating Culture & Policy. ISSN 1329-878X. Full text in Research Archive

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• Moss-Wellington, Wyatt & Wilkins, Kim (2026). The Body Swap Film. Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781836956709. 324 p. doi: 10.3167/9781836956709. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  An enduring yet underexamined tradition in popular cinema, body swap narratives have captivated audiences across cultures and genres. This volume offers the first study of the ‘body swap' film, examining notable examples such as the Freaky Friday films alongside comedies, horrors, and hybrid forms shaped by bodily transformation. Extending beyond cinema, Contributors trace the trope's evolution across television, videogames, digital platforms, online identity practices, and avatar relationships. Grounded in film studies yet interdisciplinary in scope, the collection engages gender theory, race theory, trans scholarship, transnational media studies, and philosophy to illuminate how body swapping reshapes understandings of identity, embodiment, and power in global media culture.

• Wilkins, Kim & Vermeulen, Timotheus (2022). Refocus: The Films of Richard Linklater. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474493826. 256 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim & Moss-Wellington, Wyatt (2019). ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474447621. 264 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2019). American Eccentric Cinema. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781501336911. 224 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Wilkins, Kim (2021). Creative Resistance: Noah Baumbach’s Literary Filmography. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2020). Indie Courtship: Pursuing the American New Wave. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2020). Review of Rob Stone's "Before the End" Video Essay. [in]Transition. 7(3). Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2020). Verdens første møte med Disney-prinsessen. Avisa Vårt land. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2019). Interview about new book "American Eccentric Cinema". [TV]. TRT World. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2016). The Daughter. Australian Book Review. ISSN 0155-2864. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2016). Everybody Wants Some!! Australian Book Review. ISSN 0155-2864. Full text in Research Archive
• Wilkins, Kim (2015). Mad Max: Fury Road. Australian Book Review. ISSN 0155-2864. Full text in Research Archive

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