Check out the latest issue of Girlhood Studies for Dr. Scahill's new essay "Fanfic'ing Film: Queer Youth Cinema Reclaims Pop Culture." The essay is guided by a simple question: if given the means to make their own films, what stories would young queer people today tell about their own lives? To answer this question, Dr. Scahill traveled to Calgary in 2018 to attend the Fairy Tales Film Festival, where festival organizers provided training and resources to young queer filmmake

Students in Dr. Scahill's "Studies in Censorship" class presented their original research on the very timely topic of art censorship on Wednesday, May 2 in the Auraria Library. By presenting their works-in-progress in a public forum, students considering graduate study were able to experience a conference format in a supportive environment. The topics included literature as well as film, and the issues concerning political dissent, sexuality, public space, and free speech p

In the most recent issue of CU Denver Today, Dr. Scahill was asked to take part in a new faculty profile. In the article, Prof. Scahill talks about his work on horror cinema, his current class on film censorship, the field of academia, and his Instagram-famous dog Otto. The piece begins: "An expert on horror, Scahill describes himself as a 'film historian' who considers how a movie’s successes are both deeply idiosyncratic and indelibly linked to larger cultural forces. At th

The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference will be in Toronto this year. Please come to the workshop I'm chairing on Wednesday, March 14 from 3-4:45pm: "Not Just Kidding Around: On Teaching Children's Media" considers the absence of children's films in film studies curriculum (despite the fact that they carry a 20% market share in the industry). This is a problematic omission for understanding film culture, as children’s films have increased in market share fr

The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference will be in Chicago this year. Look for our workshop "Surviving the Adjunct" on contingent labor in media studies on Friday, March 24 at 9am. Today, 66% of college faculty members are non-tenure track, and half of those instructors work part-time at multiple institutions to make ends meet. 66% of those adjunct faculty are currently seeking tenure-track employment, and 38% have been on the market for over five years.