Storytelling for the Screen:
The Artful Dodger

James McNamara is the creator, head writer, and executive producer of the critically-acclaimed international Disney+ and Hulu series The Artful Dodger. Season 1 was nominated for seven Australian Academy Awards (AACTAs) and McNamara was nominated for an Australian Writers’ Guild Award for writing the pilot episode. McNamara’s work as a writer and showrunner is defined by language-driven, actor-centred drama. His formation includes conservatory training in writing, directing, and classical performance at the National Institute of Dramatic Art and the Bell Shakespeare Company; screenwriting training at Australia’s national film school, the Australian Film Television and Radio School; and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Oxford. Alongside his creative practice, McNamara is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Film and Media Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara.

Ross Melnick is Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara and Interim Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center. He was named an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Scholar and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for his book Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Columbia University Press, 2022). He is the author of American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (CUP, 2012), co-editor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (AFI/Routledge, 2018), and co-author of Cinema Treasures (MBI, 2004). His research has appeared in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film History, The Moving Image, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and in numerous other journals and edited collections.