Australian Queer Screens: Film and TV Diversity and Social Change

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Description

This is the first book-length study of Australias rich history of LGBTQ+ film and television, covering histories, production, screen representation and audience identities.

Despite a long-standing international field of queer media studies, Australian scholarship has only recently emerged. Screen diversity in Australia is important to cultural policy, education and social harmony. This book presents new scholarship on the role and significance of gender- and sexually-diverse characters, themes and narratives on Australian screens, as Australian film and television has a very rich history of representing LGBTQ+, gender- and sexually-diverse characters, stories and themes.

The chapters in this book cover a broad range of areas to provide a comprehensive overview of LGBTQ+ film and television in Australia, including: the history and formation of LGBTQ+ screen representation in such film and TV series as Dad and Dave Come To Town, Lovers and Luggers, Cop Shop, Division 4, and Homicide; production perspectives and challenges, including insights from screen writers and actors; the significance of LGBTQ+ film festivals as part of Australian cultural heritage; analyses of key Australian queer film and TV series to draw out themes that foreground their Australianness, including The Set, Victims, and Boys in the Band, among others; and perspectives on audience and culture, including the utility and value of LGBTQ+ screen representation to identity, belonging and social change.

Author Bio

Rob Cover is Professor of Digital Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. His publications include: Identity in the COVID-19 Years (Bloomsbury, 2024), Identity and Digital Communication: Concepts, Theories, Practices (2023), and Fake News in Digital Culture (2021), among many others.

Whitney Monaghan is a Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Monash University, Australia. Her current research examines LGBTIQ representation on screen. She is the author of Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: Not Just a Phase (2016), and co-author of Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures (2020). She is also a co-ordinator of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival.

Stuart Richards lectures in Screen Studies at the University of South Australia. He is author of The Queer Film Festival: Popcorn & Politics (2016). He has previously worked with both the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and the San Francisco Frameline International LGBTQ Film Festival.

Scott McKinnonis a PERL Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He has a research background in histories and geographies of sexuality, and the place of movies in Australian cultures, with a focus on film reception and memories of cinema among gay audiences. He is the author of Gay Men at the Movies: Cinema, Memory and the History of a Gay Male Community (2016).

Tinonee Pym is a Research Associate on the ARC Discovery Project AusQueerScreen: Representation of Gender and Sexual Diversity in Australian Film and Television, 1990-2010 at RMIT University, Australia. She is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Media and Communication at Swinburne University, Australia, where her research focuses on queer community, sexuality and digital cultures.