This book takes up the queer girl as a represented and rhetorical figure within film, television and video. In 1987, Canada’s Degrassi Junior High featured one of TV’s first queer teen storylines. Contained to a single episode, it was promptly forgotten within both the series and popular culture more generally. Cut to 2016 – queer girls are now major characters in films and television series around the globe. No longer represented as subsidiary characters within forgettable storylines, queer girls are a regular feature of contemporary screen media. Analysing the terms of this newfound visibility, Whitney Monaghan provides a critical perspective on this, arguing that a temporal logic underpins many representations of queer girlhood. Examining an archive of screen texts that includes teen television series and teenpics, art-house, queer and independent cinemas as well as new forms of digital video, she expands current discourse on both queer representation and girls’ studies by looking at sexuality through themes of temporality. This book, the first full-length study of its kind, draws on concepts of boredom, nostalgia and transience to offer a new perspective on queer representation in contemporary screen media.

This thesis engages with an emerging body of scholarship on queer teens and youth culture by developing a new framework for understanding representations of queer girls within contemporary screen media. It posits that the queer girl has been dominantly temporalised in film, television and video as 'a passing phase.' This occurs through a range of means such as the plot device of the 'gay kiss,' characterisation of queer girls as bored teens, narrative structures of nostalgic retrospection and the transitory nature of television's storylines. The thesis demonstrates how these formal and narrative devices render the queerness of the queer girl as 'just a phase' to be overcome in and through the heteronormative models of human development or 'coming of age' that underpin many contemporary screen texts.The thesis also argues that there are significant alternatives to this dominant way of representing queer girlhood. The study's findings locate four alternative temporalisations of the queer girl that operate both alongside and in opposition to the dominant temporal norm. These alternative representations include a stretching out of queer subjectivity enabled by television serialisation; a loosening of the fixity of past-present relations through film techniques that draw the past and present alongside one another; the aesthetic embedding of the time of teenage boredom in film narrative; the fragmenting of temporal moments in online video that forge new connections and new forms of temporal expression.The thesis pays particular attention to the question of how each of these alternative representations of queer girls figure queer futurity in ways that challenge the heteronormative temporalisation of queer girlhood. The thesis argues that these alternative representations offer the possibility of a hopeful future for queer girls and that this figuration of queer girlhood might serve as a model for ways of countering the temporal logics and constraints of a heteronormative present more generally.

The Routledge Companion to Girls’ Studies is the definitive guide to the international, interdisciplinary, and intersectional field of Girls’ Studies, bringing together leading and emerging scholars across a range of academic disciplines to address timely topics on global girls and girlhoods. Spread across four thematic sections, the essays in this collection offer a glimpse into the evolution of the field, directly challenge and move beyond the field’s early shortcomings, provide compelling examples of current research, and suggest new directions for future Girls’ Studies scholars. Chapters explore the connections between girlhoods and such topics as sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, education, activism, social-class, ability, gender identity, media representation, and more. The Routledge Companion to Girls’ Studies is of value to scholars and students of gender studies, media studies, sociology, education, health, literature, sexuality studies, communication, child and youth studies, and more.

This short textbook provides an introduction to queer theory, exploring its key genealogies and terms as well as its application across various academic disciplines and to contemporary life more generally. The authors engage with a wide range of developments in queer theory thinking including discussions of identity politics, transgender theory, intersectionality, post-colonial theory, Indigenous studies, disability studies, affect theory, and more. In offering an updated reflection on the present tensions that queer theory must negotiate, as well as its unfolding future(s), Queer Theory Now is an ideal resource for anyone starting out on their queer theory journey; for students who want to get a grasp of the basic concepts, for teachers looking for a textbook for their queer theory course, or for scholars who want a quick go-to resource for key queer theory ideas and terms.

An investigation of the future of various media industries and technologies that considers how media shape our future. How do we combat post-truth in the news? Are social media influencers the journalists of today? What is it like to live in a smart city? Does AI really change "everything"? The Future of Media investigates the future of media industries and technologies (journalism, TV, film, photography, radio, publishing, social media), while exploring how media shape our future—on a political, economic, cultural and individual level. Issues of diversity, media reform, labour, activism and art take the discussion into a wider social context. Through this, the book celebrates the importance and vitality of media in the modern world. The Future of Media is also an experiment in collaborative modes of thinking and working. Co-authored by theorists and practitioners from one of the world’s most established media departments, it offers a radical, creative and critical take on media industries—and on world affairs.

This collection of essays illuminates the intersection of queer and adaptation. Both adaptation and queerness suffer from the stereotype of being secondary: to identify something as an adaptation is to recognize it in relation to something else that seems more original, more authentic. Similarly, to identify something as queer is to place it in relation to what is assumed to be “normal” or “straight.” This ground-breaking volume brings together fifteen original essays that critically challenge these assumptions about originality, authenticity, and value. The volume is organized in three parts: The essays in Part I examine what happens when an adaptation queers its source text and explore the role of the author/screenwriter/director in making those choices. The essays in Part II look at what happens when filmmakers push against boundaries of various kinds: time and space, texts and bodies, genres and formats. And the essays in Part III explore adaptations whose source texts cannot be easily pinned down, where there are multiple adaptations, and where the adaptation process itself is queer. The book includes discussion of a wide variety of texts, including opera, classic film, genre fiction, documentary, musicals, literary fiction, low-budget horror, camp classics, and experimental texts, providing a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction to the myriad ways in which queer and adaptation overlap.

Twenty-first century media has increasingly turned to provocative sexual content to generate buzz and stand out within a glut of programming. New distribution technologies enable and amplify these provocations, and encourage the branding of media creators as "provocauteurs" known for challenging sexual conventions and representational norms. While such strategies may at times be no more than a profitable lure, the most probing and powerful instances of sexual provocation serve to illuminate, question, and transform our understanding of sex and sexuality. In Provocauteurs and Provocations, award-winning author Maria San Filippo looks at the provocative in films, television series, web series and videos, entertainment industry publicity materials, and social media discourses and explores its potential to create alternative, even radical ways of screening sex. Throughout this edgy volume, San Filippo reassesses troubling texts and divisive figures, examining controversial strategies—from "real sex" scenes to scandalous marketing campaigns to full-frontal nudity—to reveal the critical role that sexual provocation plays as an authorial signature and promotional strategy within the contemporary media landscape.