Benjamin Kruger-RobbinsVisiting Assistant Professor

Biography

My research examines queer television production and reception cultures through archival history frameworks. I am particularly interested in how LGBTQIA+ media makers, casual TV viewers, and fan communities have challenged dominant social narratives in the United States. My work has been published in Sexualities, Flow, The Velvet Light Trap and the edited anthology The Politics of Twin Peaks (Lexington, 2019) and is forthcoming in Refractory. I am currently working on a monograph that interrogates how television awarding institutions have selectively legitimated gay-themed TV productions since the 1970s.

I teach courses on queer/camp television and horror media at Emory, in addition to classes on film and TV history more broadly. Before coming to Emory, I taught at the University of California, Irvine on topics of broadcast history, queer media, youth television, and genre programming.

Education

• PhD, Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine, 2019
• MA, Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 2014
• BS, Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 2011

Publications

Golden Gays: Awards Legitimation from the Globes to GLAAD.” The Velvet Light Trap 89 (2022). 33-44

The Owls are Not What They Seem: Retaking Queer Meaning in Twin Peaks.” The Politics of Twin Peaks. Eds. Amanda DiPaolo and Jamie Gillies. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2019. 117-141.

Straight Men Can’t Camp: The Politics of ‘Too Gay’ in Behind the Candelabra.” Flow, 18(03), 2013. http://flowtv.org/2013/07/behind-the-candelabra/

Book Reviews and Media Interviews

Review of The New Gay for Pay: The Sexual Politics of American Television Production by Julia Himberg. Sexualities 23(4), 2019: 686-688. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363460719872722?journalCode=sexa

Calibunga: Tech, Drugs and Capitalist Soul,” Aufhebunga Bunga podcast, June 20, 2019: https://aufhebungabunga.podbean.com/e/76-calibunga-tech-drugs-capitalist-soul-pt-i/