Gary Needham

the preface & introduction of my forthcoming book is now freely available to read! & you can also pre-order it at 50% off buff.ly/ehSkevd

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House.

Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity.

They are not the same.

Critical aunty studies: an auntroduction Though aunties are ubiquitous figures across global public cultures, they have received limited scholarly attention. Given the location of these women, femme, and queer figures at the periphery of ...

Great day for this special issue on critical aunty studies.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Can’t help but wonder if I would still be employed right now and, if so, for how long if I hadn’t left my position in Texas in the fall.

Half the background is a purply sheen. The other half features someone standing with another person's arm around their waist and an unclothed limb at the bottom. In the foreground of the lefthand side is the following text: "Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression revitalizes bisexuality screen scholarship by bringing critically deft, contextually rich, politically attuned evidence of its enduring indispensability and expanding urgency for queer media studies...Engelberg deepens our understandings of bisexuality's disruptive power and imaginative potential, while simultaneously staking out innovative theoretical-philosophical pathways and invaluable alliances with feminist, trans, and critical race studies." - Maria San Filippo, author of The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television

The righthand side of the background is a purply sheen. The lefthand side is the face of Sharon Stone playing Catherine in the film Basic Instinct. To her left is the back of a blonde woman wearing a hooped earring. There is text on the righthand side of the image that reads: "Jacob Engelberg addresses an under-researched area in queer cinema studies with an impressive theoretical sophistication. His keen knowledge of film history and generous interventions in queer theory, film theory, and the bisexual film canon make this book the most comprehensive, considered, and thoughtful analysis of bisexuality in visual culture I have encountered. I'm frankly delighted by it." — Maria Pramaggiore, co-editor of Film: A Critical Introduction, 4th edition

Towards the righthand side of the background is a person in a tank top manipulating something in their hands. In front of them is someone with their back turned. The lefthand side of the frame is a purply sheen. The text above it reads: "Jacob Engelberg lets the sexual body breathe.... Delivering new insights into the erotic life of mass culture, this book also reconceives bisexuality...as a tenacious sign of the unknowability of the bodies we crave and those we inhabit, on screen and off. This is a richly textured, subtle, and erudite engagement with the mass cultural archive, and a promising debut from an emerging critical voice, that resounds with a particular clarity and a rangy ambition." — Grace E. Lavery, author of Closures: Heterosexuality and the American Sitcom

i'm very happy to share these endorsements for my forthcoming book, CINEMAS OF BISEXUAL TRANSGRESSION. it means the world to have such generous words from scholars i respect so deeply.

100% I would also add Clara Law to the "best of" too! I used to teach her Farewell China

It seems to be a curation exclusively from the "Golden Princess Film Production" catalogue which I assume is why there's no Ann Hui. It is a pretty small roster of films from what I remember but includes those John Woo/Tsui Hark big hitters.

a screen grab of a title image, presenting the title "Bi-Coastal" with an outline of the mainland US in an illustration behind it. this floats above a blurry cityscape

a medium close up shot, two white men with dark hair look at each other while one blonde woman looks up at one of them

the front cover of a book with the following text on it. "SCREENING CINEMA. SCREENING ADULT CINEMA. Edited by FARRAH FREIBERT, PETER ALILUNAS, and DESIRAE EMBREE." This text appears over a red background, and beside the editors names is the logo for the publisher Routledge. In the top half of the cover, a brown-skinned person with shaved sides of their head and a nose ring operates a camera.

a screenshot of the first page of a chapter. It reads: 18. BI-COASTAL (1985). Jacob Engelberg. DOI: 10.4324/9781003276302-18. There is a fleeting moment in Linda Williams's influential article "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess" in which she references a rapidly proliferating pornographic subgenre. "There is a new category of video called bisexual," Williams announces, before detailing its definitional conventions: "Men do it with women, women do it with men, men do it with men and then all do it with one another, in the process breaking down a fundamental taboo against male-to-male sex." First published in 1991, Williams's article arrived six years after the explosion of a subgenre calling itself bisexual video. Whereas depictions of female bisexuality have been present in straight pornographic films since the earliest days of stag (and continue to this day), depictions of male bisexuality have been fewer. "Bisexual" would thus come to name an industrial category whose sine qua non was the depiction of men having sex with both women and men. This chapter considers one of the formative releases of the early bisexual video boom: Tom DeSimone's Bi-Coastal (1985). The video follows Jill (Cara Lott), who has traveled, bicoastally, from Chicago to Los Angeles to meet her boyfriend Nick (Tico Patterson).

my chapter on one of the first instalments of the 80s bi video boom: BI-COASTAL (1985) is now available! featured in the wonderful SCREENING ADULT FILM, edited by ‪‪@ffreibert.bsky.social‬, Peter Alilunas, & Desirae Embree. ask your library to buy it! www.routledge.com/Screening-Ad...

Three shelves of brightly coloured books

Are you neurodivergent & have done, or considered, a PhD? We’re researching how doctoral study works (or doesn’t) for neurodivergent people. Take our 30min survey & help make academia more inclusive forms.office.com/e/ft9jyWsPUW

Questions? Email lindsay.odell@open.ac.uk

#PhD #Neurodivergent

A scene from TV series #AlienEarth which a sick child looking up at an overhead screen showing a #Disney animation.

A scene from TV series #AlienEarth which is in black and white and shows a a man watching a Disney Pixar animation on a screen.

The most scary and dystopian thing about Alien: Earth is that the only consumable media in the future appears to be Disney. In the first episode two scenes in which media content is watched in different geographies, locales is other Disney texts including Peter Pan and Pixar's Ice Age.

The Ableism and Privilege Behind “You Must Write Every Day” You are the expert on yourself.  (This article first appeared in Write, the official magazine of the Writers’ Union of Canada, Summer 2022 edition.) One of my favourite things about being in a…

Post from @caitgauthor.bsky.social on the ableism behind “write every day!”

I am definitely writing my book on crip time. Bc I must, there is no other way for me.

caitgordon.com/2022/09/16/t...

Post on /r/transgenderUK entitled “Reddit now censors LGBTQ+ content under OFCOM’s new ‘Online Safety Act’”

post text: “I honestly can't even think of words to describe how vile this is. Here's a screenshot of what I now see when I search "lgbt" with my VPN switched off. Occasionally a banner appears at the top of the screen saying something about needing to verify ID to access "mature content" but the button doesn't even work. The fact that we're now considered "mature content" makes me feel sick.”

The screenshot referenced in the previous image, showing the results of a search on Reddit for the term LGBT. No results from LGBT-specific subreddits appear; instead, posts from /r/Conservative, /r/Islam, /r/JustUnsubbed, etc are highlighted.

the UK’s Internet age verification law has led to the effective censorship of all LGBT content on Reddit

what a shocking and unexpected turn of events!

strange it just appeared on my timeline too!

How did I miss this. Thought it was a recent post but it is from May 😖 hope it went well

an advert for the TCM network showing an image of Sandra Bernhard in the film Without You I'm Nothing

I screen shot from a queer film festival showing Vito Russo's Parting Glances series on films from the eighties

New Queer Cinema apparently includes "Milk" and "Fox." I will hopefully be setting the record straight on the fiction of New Queer Cinema as "an irresponsible canon" (the chapter title) when the book on AIDS and independent cinema is actually finished. PS 'Without you I'm Nothing" is actually great!

Perhaps a good time to re up the New Fascism Syllabus, an online repository of resources on neofascism, populism, and authoritarianism, including a research repository and relevant secondary literature.

newfascismsyllabus.com

related - I always remember Sarah Shulman's calling it the "New York Crimes" for its handling of the AIDS crisis

Deaf rappers who lay down rhymes in sign languages are changing what it means for music to be heard Dip hop artists move across the stage, hands flying through the air, as audiences pulse to the rhythm of a blasting bass beat.

"the designation “dip hop”... signals an independent style grounded in both hip-hop and Deaf culture. Like bounce, trap and drill, the label “dip hop” makes a greater distinction from being a variation of rap to a style that is heavily situated within Deaf culture and determined by Deaf aesthetics."

sensational

👇excited to now be able to share my partner @jacobengelberg.bsky.social forthcoming book (January 2026) with @dukepress.bsky.social A much needed intervention that really does change how we think, theorise, and conceptualise cinema and bisexuality!

How to Win a Fight These days it feels like the next fight is always just around the corner. What matters is picking your battles—and knowing how to win.

For months, @wired.com has been working on something about this moment's big fights: pushback against immigration raids, Tesla Takedown, LGBTQ+ rights. When we started, we didn't expect to publish following some of the biggest protests of Trump’s second term.

www.wired.com/how-to-win-a...

I loved the original version but this Nitzer Ebb version and their additional remixes was elevated. The remixes on the Mute 12" are stunning. An indictment to streaming services as these gems haven't been heard since 1989.

shout out to this one too @horrornonna.com which was a formative moment www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVy...

Against Technofeudal Education Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI

Great recs from @mattseybold.bsky.social on resisting technofeudal education: prioritize print, practice ungrading, "Luddify" the classroom; de-mobilize computer infrastructure (root technology in social place!); faculty governance over SaaS subscriptions; instructor choice re: ed-tech

Cosmic-ish abstract image of rays or wool or something haloing a central hole or space, with the word catflap written in hot pink across the middle.

Getting writing, queer dears: I want ur essays & poems in my eyes for catflap #5, Outburst Arts' awesome magazine.

Deadline: 30 June for finished poems & essays / 10 June for essay pitches, pls read FAQ carefully! Paid.

Pls share! Pls submit! No genAI! No str8s!

outburstarts.com/events-proje...

The new 4K restoration of Mike Thomas’s groundbreaking gay sexploitation film THE MEAT/RACK premieres at Frameline on June 26th and is now available for festival bookings.

www.frameline.org/films/framel...

The type-set pages are in now for 'Screening Adult Cinema' edited by @ffreibert.bsky.social Peter Alilunas, and Des Embree. My own 'Boys in the Sand' (1971) is one of the 39 chapters in the book. More on the forthcoming book and chapters can be found here: www.routledge.com/Screening-Ad...

Here's a long thread on an issue dear to my heart. This Tuesday evening I’m doing an Intellectual Publics with Macarena Gomez-Barris on publishing. Like last year’s conversation with Denise Cruz, or the prior year’s with Racquel Gates, we will talk about how to find a publisher, turn a thesis... 1/

Parting Glances (1986)
Anhell69 (2022)
120 BPM (2017)
Killing of Sister George (1968)

TSQ Transgender Studies Quarterly Volume 12, Number 2, May 2025 Toward a Trans[]Crip Theory Special Issue. Editors J. Logan Smilges and Slava Greenberg Image of dancing people in wheelchairs by Micah Bazant

Each of the articles in this special issue theorizes the [] between trans and crip in distinct yet interconnected ways, expanding on the dynamic tension between difference and alignment.

I’ll be introducing them throughout June.

@dukepress.bsky.social