Thomas Britt

Thomas Britt is a scholar of film, television, literature, music, and other media. Having completed an MFA in fiction and non-fiction filmmaking from Ohio University and a PhD in post-classical cinema at the University of Brighton’s School of Art and Media, Britt teaches courses in both practice and theory, regularly teaching the Ethics of Film, a variety of screenwriting classes, and Global Horror Film, which are among the many courses he created as a founding faculty member of Film and Video Studies (FAVS) at George Mason. 

He is the head of the FAVS Screenwriting pathway, a mentor for faculty across the College of Visual and Performing Arts, a recipient of the University Teaching Excellence Award, a Teacher of Distinction, a Mason Chooses Kindness Ambassador, a multiannual recipient of the Mason Core Award, and the faculty advisor and co-creator of Storyline, a journal celebrating student screenwriting that is published annually by Student Media. Before coming to George Mason, he taught undergraduate courses at Ohio University and Connecticut College. Outside of George Mason, he is an active member of the Sydney Literature and Cinema Network (Sydney, Australia) and Vice President of the Theta Chi Epsilon Alumni Board (Emory & Henry University).

His scholarly writing (see selected publications below) spans disciplines, with recurring subjects including screen ethics, adaptation, mortality, theology, Twin Peaks and the works of David Lynch, horror films, and experimental music. In addition to contributing chapters to books/edited volumes, Britt has published articles and essays in a variety of academic journals, including Angles: French Perspectives on the Anglophone World, CINEJ Cinema Journal, Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal, Journal of Visual Art Practice, Jura Gentium Cinema, New Review of Film and Television Studies, The Quint, REDEN - Revista Española de Estudios Norteamericanos, Savoirs en prisme, South Central Review, and Textes et contexts.

Britt speaks at several academic conferences and symposia every year, engaging with a variety of subject areas, organizations, and research projects. He has presented his research at meetings of The American Comparative Literature Association, Appalachian Studies Association, The Bridges Organization/Bridges Math Art, British Association for Modernist Studies, British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, Chronotopic Cartographies, Cine-Excess, CineMuseSpace, Cultural Studies Association, Fear 2000, Film & History, Film-Philosophy, Joint Mathematics Meetings, Kathryn Bigelow: A Visionary Director, Literature/Film Association, MASCAGE, Networks, Nodes & New Approaches to Adaptation Studies, Midwest Popular Culture Association and Midwest American Culture Association, Nightmare ‘24, Northeast Modern Language Association, Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, The Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, Southern Humanities Council, Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, The Superhero Project, The Sydney Literature & Cinema Network, Sydney Screen Studies Network, To Be Continued, Transition: Forum for Interdisciplinary Studies into Modernity, TRUST, Twin Peaks | The Return Online Conference, University Film and Video Association, among many others.

Since 2009, he has been a rock music critic for PopMatters, conducting and writing long-form interview features with musicians from bands including Animal Collective, Belle and Sebastian, the Breeders, the Fiery Furnaces, the Flaming Lips, Grandaddy, Liars, Liturgy, Pavement, Pinback, the Pixies, Portishead, PUP, Smoking Popes, Sonic Youth, St. Paul and Broken Bones, and Ween, as well as solo artists including Richard Dawson, Dan Deacon, Damien Jurado, Cliff Martinez, and Yoko Ono. He has also written interview features profiling comedians (Albert Brooks, Tim Heidecker, and Tom Scharpling) and filmmakers (Lance Bangs, Dan Gilroy, Harmony Korine, and Fernando Meirelles). ‘On Principle,’ Britt’s column about cases in media ethics, ran on PopMatters from 2011 to 2019.

For the past decade, the focus of his creative practice has been writing short film screenplays, which have been selected or awarded by more than 175 film festivals and screenwriting competitions around the world.

Selected recent publications (book chapters and journal articles):

2025

‘Borderline Experimental:’ Red Letter Media Plays the Pandemic

Sleeping through The Big Lebowski: Sleep, Dreams, and Rest in the Coen Brothers' Films and Jeff Bridges' Music

2024

What is Television? Two Auteur Series in Literary Contexts

Streets on Locke: The Volition of Atlanta

The Fiery Furnaces: Memory-Based Rock Music as Literature

Stories, Frames, and Objects: Pulp Fiction as a Transitional Work

Potential and Power in Black Superhero Film Comedies

2023

Male Ageing and Retribution in Contemporary Action Thrillers

David Lynch’s Desert Frontier: Road Movie, Desert Horror and Western Liminality

‘The Imagination of Disaster’ in End of the World

2022

The Musician and the Recording Studio: Satirical Perspectives in Film and Television

2021

Human After All: The Irony of Black Mirror

Irony Ends in Why

Variations on ‘the lonely walk’ in the films of Kathryn Bigelow

‘On the Way to Perfection’: Red Passages in Twin Peaks: The Return

Honors and Awards

• Robert K. Purks Faculty Enrichment Fund Grant, College of Visual and Performing Arts Endowment
• Teaching Excellence Award, Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence
• Teacher of Distinction, Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence

Degrees

• MFA, Film, Ohio University
• PhD, School of Art and Media, University of Brighton