Guest Seminar: 23 April 2008 in Room S0.11
What's Love Got To Do With It?: Worship, Football, and the Celebrity of David Beckham in Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham
Dr Claudia May is a Senior Lecturer in Theology and Culture at Birmingham Christian College and an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Birmingham
Dr May is a creative writer and literary critic and teaches identity, gender, class, and race formation in American, Caribbean, and Ethnic American literature and theatre. She also explores the relationship between literature and the Bible and examines how writers and filmmakers engage with various expressions of spirituality in their works. The union between football and religion, and the correlation between celebrity worship and religious expression are just a few of the other themes Dr May mines in her lectures and research. She is currently working on a book that analyses the presence of the blues in African American Women’s literature entitled: When Women Sing The Blues: The Trajectories of the Blues in African American Women's Literature (2008). Her next project entitled: Believe: Football, Religious Devotion and Secular Expressions of Belief in British and American Film investigates the significance of religious symbolism in contemporary Film.
Dr May is a serving member on the editorial board for the International Journal of Religion and Sport (Mercer University Press).