Research interests:

• American film history
• Gender, race, ethnicity, and age in film
• Genre films

Current research project:

• A Yellow Imperilled Frontier: Chinese Immigration and Classical Era Film and TV Westerns

Honours:

• Edgar Award Nomination for 'Best Critical/Biographical Book' (2012) for Detecting Women.
• Anthony Award Nomination for 'Best Critical Nonfiction Work' (2012) for Detecting Women.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Funding:

• Insight Grant (2019-ongoing) for The Yellow Imperilled Frontier: Chinese Immigration through Classical Hollywood Borderland Films

• Conection Grant (2017-19) with Katherine Spring for Classical Hollywood Studies in the 21^st Century 

• Insight Grant (2012-18) for Criminalization/Assimilation: Chinese/Americans in Classical Hollywood Film

• Standard Research Grant (2005-09) for Softboiled Men and Hardboiled Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film

I have supervised doctoral students working on topics including transnational Chinese action heroines, women in silent war films, Hollywood auteurs and digital cinema, and crime and serial narratives.

I welcome graduate students working in the areas of American film history, genre, and gender or race in film.

• “Race in a ‘Civil’ Frontier: The Chinese-Story Western of the Civil Rights Era.” Comparative American Studies: An International Journal (forthcoming).
• “Crossing America’s Borders: Chinese Immigrants in the Southwesterns of the 1920s and 1930s.” Journal of Film and Video 4 (2017): 3-17.
• “Home Sweet Home Front Women: Adapting Women for Hollywood’s World War II Home-Front Films.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture 15.2 (2016) 
• “The Assimilated Asian American as American Action Hero: Anna May Wong, Keye Luke, and James Shigeta in the Classical Hollywood Detective Film.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 22.2 (2013): 19-40.
• “The Asian Renovation of Biracial Buddy Action: Negotiating Globalization in the Millennial Hollywood Cop Action Film.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 40.2 (2012): 83-93.
• “Acting His Age?: The Resurrection of the 80s Action Heroes and their Aging Stars.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 27.4 (2010): 276-89.
• “The Maritorious Melodrama: Film Noir with a Female Detective.” Journal of Film and Video 61.3 (2009): 24-39.
• “The Three Sam Spades: The Shifting Model of American Masculinity in the Three Films of The Maltese Falcon.” Framework 49.1 (2008): 7-26.
• “‘Fighting the Good Fight’: The Real and the Moral in the Contemporary Hollywood Combat Film.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22.4 (2005): 297-310.
• “Manhunting: The Female Detective in the Contemporary Serial Killer Film.” Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 24.1 (2004): 42-61.
• “Always a Partner in Crime: Black Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film.” The Journal of Popular Film and Television 32.1 (2004): 20-9.
• “The Man’s Film: Woo and the Pleasure of Male Melodrama.” Journal of Popular Culture 35.1 (2001): 59-79.

• “Controlling Racism: The Production Code Administration and the Representation of Chinese/Americans.” Eds. P. Gates and K. Spring. Resetting the Scene: Classical Hollywood Revisited. Wayne State UP, 2021. 155-68.
• “Objects of an Orientalist Gaze: Chinese Immigrants in American Silent Film.” Asian American Literature in Transition, 1850-1930. Eds. Josephine Lee and Julia Lee. Cambridge UP, 2021. 121-35.
• “Asian Americans in Pre-World War II Cinema.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. Josephine Lee. Oxford UP, 2020. Online.
• Ageing in Action: Hollywood’s Ageing Ensemble Action Hero Series/«Vieillir, agir: les héros d’âge mûr dans deux séries de films d’action hollywoodiens.» L’Âge des stars: des images à l’épreuve du vieillissement. Eds.  Charles-Antoine Courcoux, et al. Lausanne, L’Âge d’homme, 2017. 130-50.
• “The Wild (North)West: Chinese Immigration, Crime, and the Canadian Border in Film.” Screening Justice: Canadian Crime Films and Society. Steven Kohm, et al. Fernwood Press, 2016. 22-39.
• "Independence Unpunished: The Female Detective in Classic Film Noir.” Kiss the Blood off my Hands: Re-Screening Classic Noir. Ed. Robert Miklitsch. Illinois UP, 2014. 17-36.
• “’‘Hidden in the Snow’: Female Violence against the Men Who Hate Women in the ‘Millennium’ Adaptations.” Rape in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy and Beyond: Contemporary Scandinavian and Anglophone Crime Fiction. Eds. Berit Ǻström, et al. Palgrave Macmillan (2012). 193-214.
• “A Good Vintage or Damaged Goods? Clint Eastwood and Aging in Hollywood Film.” Clint Eastwood, Actor and Director: Volume II. Ed. Leonard Engel. Utah UP, 2012. 168-89.
• “Hong Kong Noir: American Film Noir and Asian Innovation, 1956-66.” Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas: The Reel Asian Exchange. Ed. P. Gates and L. Funnell. Routledge, 2011. 3-16.
• “Criminal Investigation on Film.” Blackwell Companion to Crime Fiction. Eds. Charles J. Rzepka and Lee Horsley. Blackwell Publishing, 2010. 344-355.
• “Getting Away with It: Villainy in the Contemporary Hollywood Detective Film.” The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film. Eds. Stacy Gillis and Philippa Gates. Greenwood Press, 2002. 183-96.

• "Conversation with Scholars of American Popular Culture: Featured Guest Philippa Gates." Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture 1900 to the Present 8.2 (2009).

Graduate Seminars:

• EN 616: Women and Crime in Fiction and Film

Undergraduate Courses:

• FS 103: Film and Genre
• FS 243: Hollywood Auteurs
• FS 249: The Detective Film
• FS 252: Film Noir
• FS 264: Classical Hollywood Film
• FS 344: American Film Since 1969
• FS 357: The Western
• FS 443a: War in Literature and Film
• FS443f: Asian Americans in US Film