ABOUT
Dr. John Paul Stadler is a media scholar and fiction writer. His research and teaching centers on the role of media in shaping modern notions of gender and sexuality, with particular regard to queer and transgender subjectivities. In his current project Pornographesis: Sex, Media and Gay Culture, he explores the historical force, technological forms, and sexual politics of adult media to correct a blind spot in the story sexuality studies tells about contemporary gay life. By paying close attention to the narrative structures, cultural positions, and reception practices of adult media since the 1960s, he makes the case for the centrality of this popular cultural form for understanding the historical formation of gay identity. In addition to delivering vexed pleasures, adult media also intervene in political crises, forge alternative social structures, and challenge the rigid demands of heteronormative masculinity. Pornographesis dives deep into this popular cultural form while engaging closely with its migration across formats—from 16mm to video, print, photographic, telephonic, theatrical, and digital technologies—to shed light on desire’s entanglement with and acceleration of media innovation.
Dr. Stadler is currently a Teaching Assistant Professor of Film Studies at North Carolina State University. He received his Ph.D. from the Program in Literature at Duke University (2018), where he also earned certificates in Feminist Studies and Information Science + Information Studies. Prior to his doctorate, he received his MFA from the Creative Writing Program at University of Colorado, Boulder (2009). Dr. Stadler has taught courses in and across film and media studies, gender and sexuality studies, Africana studies, visual culture, 20th and 21st century literatures, performance studies, creative writing, and composition.