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Biography
James McNamara is an Associate Professor of Teaching in Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. An intellectual historian of literature and film, his work traces the long history of ideas about imitation, originality, and adaptation from classical antiquity to contemporary film and television. He is currently completing a book, Metamorphoses: An Intellectual History of Adaptation, which examines how classical theories of imitatio were reinterpreted in the Renaissance, reshaped by Romantic originality, and continue to structure modern screen adaptation.
Alongside his academic work, McNamara is an active television writer and showrunner. He is the creator of The Artful Dodger for Disney+ and Hulu, which received seven Australian Academy Awards (AACTA) nominations, and the creator of Cooper, an international television drama developed with Goalpost Pictures and Quizzical Pictures and selected for France’s leading television festival. His creative work also includes executive producing scripted drama for Disney+, writing and directing for Audible, and contributing to television writers’ rooms for leading international production companies. He has consulted on feature films for Porchlight Films, Icon Film Distribution, and Fox Searchlight Pictures, and has twice been named an “international rising star” by BAFTA LA.
McNamara is affiliated faculty in UCSB’s Early Modern Center within the Department of English and is a former Guest Artist in dramatic writing in the Department of Theater and Dance. In 2022–23, he held a Visiting Fellowship in the Department of English at the University of Sydney. His public-facing cultural criticism has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, and Australian Book Review, where he previously served on the editorial advisory board.