Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · 2d

if you or someone you know is an MA or PhD working on modern & contemporary pornographic media, encourage them to submit an article for the New Directions Graduate Essay Prize. the winning essay will be published in @pornstudiesjournal.bsky.social. more info: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rpr...

New Directions Graduate Essay Prize in association with the BAFTSS Screening Sex Special Interest Group

Explore the article collection: New Directions Graduate Essay Prize in association with the BAFTSS Screening Sex Special Interest Group. Published in Porn Studies.

www.tandfonline.com

Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · 15d

i have a blurb! dukeupress.edu/cinemas-of-b...

On the left-hand side of the image is the cover to the book Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression by Jacob Engelberg, which depicts an image from Basic Instinct, featuring Sharon Stone looking at the camera beside two other figures who are turned away. Below the book cover it reads: "January 2026. 352 pages. Film/Queer theory. Rights: World." To the right of this is the following text: "Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression
JACOB ENGELBERG
In Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression, Jacob Engelberg makes the case for radically recalibrating queer film studies, taking as a starting point those cinematic figures who resist categorization within the gay-straight binary. Engelberg's engagement with bisexual transgression on film illuminates the mutability and instability of sexuality, and of sociocultural structures more broadly by resisting the censure of images as politically harmful as well as the celebration of transgression as inherently subversive. Instead, Engelberg understands bisexual transgression as a process whereby sociocultural rules are made knowable by being contested. From 1970s vampire films to 1990s erotic thrillers, from lesbian imaginings of female bisexuality to European art cinema's reckonings with HIV/AIDS, bisexual figures on film embody anxieties around the precarity of binary sexuality while revealing the contingencies of sexuality's cinematic signification.
Revivifying the underexploited contributions of bisexual theory, Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression proposes a new mode of film theorization and analysis that examines the rich space between and beyond dominant categories of sexual organization, where sexual unpredictability, the allure of the forbidden, and the precarity of sexual signification are illuminated.
Jacob Engelberg is Assistant Professor of Film, Media, and Culture at the University of Amsterdam."

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · 29d

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.

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

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Aug 31

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...

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

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).

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Aug 24

if you can get to Manchester, don't miss the opportunity to see this landmark of Parallel Cinema featuring a bisexual bandit whose place among cinema's messiest bisexual transgressors is well-deserved

Omar Ahmed 🍉 @bressonian.bsky.social · Aug 13

Excited to be back at HOME cinemas in Manchester on Thursday 28 August at 6.30pm.

I will be introducing director Prem Kapoor's BADNAM BASTI (India, 1971), India's first queer film, and which is part of @cineredis.bsky.social on tour.

More info & tickets:

homemcr.org/whats-on/bad...

Badnam Basti (CTBA) + intro — Once lost and now rediscovered: India’s pioneering first queer film.

Once lost and now rediscovered: India’s pioneering first queer film.

homemcr.org

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Laura Horak @laurah.bsky.social · Jul 24

Lookee here! My book has a cover!

Coming from @ucpress.bsky.social in April 2026. Many thanks to Tourmaline for allowing us to use her photograph "Summer Azure"!

A brown-skinned trans woman in an astronaut's helmet and white tunic floats in front of a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. Text: "Trans Cinema" Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds. Laura Horak"

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Nicholas Baer @nwbaer.bsky.social · Jul 9

Like so many others, I was dismayed by the recent news that the profit-driven Taylor & Francis acquired multiple book series (including our open-access "The Key Debates") as part of a transaction with Amsterdam University Press. I proudly signed this collective resignation letter.

Sale of the Amsterdam University Press (AUP) film, media and communication list to Taylor & Francis – Resignation of series editors and editorial board members

It is with great dismay that we, the undersigned, learned that the film, media and communication list of Amsterdam University Press (AUP) has been taken over by Taylor & Francis, a subsidiary of Infor...

mediastudies.hypotheses.org

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Vinzenz Hediger @vinzenzhediger.bsky.social · Jul 9

The time has come to reinvent academic publishing. Over the last years conglomerates have bought up once respectable publishers and turned them into rent extraction machines, generating obscene profits from tax-payer funded research and unremunerated academic labor./
mediastudies.hypotheses.org/6850

Sale of the Amsterdam University Press (AUP) film, media and communication list to Taylor & Francis – Resignation of series editors and editorial board members

It is with great dismay that we, the undersigned, learned that the film, media and communication list of Amsterdam University Press (AUP) has been taken over by Taylor & Francis, a subsidiary of Infor...

mediastudies.hypotheses.org

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Folia @foliacivitatis.bsky.social · Jul 9

28 international editors have announced their resignation from commercial publisher Taylor & Francis, which recently acquired their book series from Amsterdam University Press (AUP). The editors made this known today in a signed letter to the publisher. www.folia.nl/en/actueel/1...

28 editors resign after takeover at AUP publishing house

www.folia.nl

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jul 9

28 editors have resigned from Amsterdam University Press following its unprecedented takeover by Taylor & Francis and firing of commissioning editors. read the letter here: mediastudies.hypotheses.org/6850

Sale of the Amsterdam University Press (AUP) film, media and communication list to Taylor & Francis – Resignation of series editors and editorial board members

It is with great dismay that we, the undersigned, learned that the film, media and communication list of Amsterdam University Press (AUP) has been taken over by Taylor & Francis, a subsidiary of Infor...

mediastudies.hypotheses.org

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 18

💜💜💜

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J(oules) @keyofjay.bsky.social · Jun 18

This book looks good!

Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 17

delighted that i can now share the cover of my forthcoming monograph 𝘊𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. released 6 Jan 2026 with @dukepress.bsky.social in the Camera Obscura series.

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 18

💜💜💜

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Slava Greenberg 🩼🏳️‍⚧️✡️🇺🇦 in 🇳🇱 for 🍉 @slavagreenberg.bsky.social · Jun 17

I am *so* looking forward to this book!!!

What a gorgeous cover! 🤩

Congratulations @jacobengelberg.bsky.social ✨
💙📚 #Booksky

Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 17

delighted that i can now share the cover of my forthcoming monograph 𝘊𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. released 6 Jan 2026 with @dukepress.bsky.social in the Camera Obscura series.

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Gary Needham @garyneedham.bsky.social · Jun 17

👇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!

Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 17

delighted that i can now share the cover of my forthcoming monograph 𝘊𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. released 6 Jan 2026 with @dukepress.bsky.social in the Camera Obscura series.

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Kat for now 🍉 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏕️ @esedia.bsky.social · Jun 17

Oh that looks good as fuck

Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 17

delighted that i can now share the cover of my forthcoming monograph 𝘊𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. released 6 Jan 2026 with @dukepress.bsky.social in the Camera Obscura series.

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 17

thank you, Natalia!

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 17

delighted that i can now share the cover of my forthcoming monograph 𝘊𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. released 6 Jan 2026 with @dukepress.bsky.social in the Camera Obscura series.

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Vinzenz Hediger @vinzenzhediger.bsky.social · Jun 6

IMPORTANT ADVICE FOR AUTHORS AND SERIES EDITORS ON THE FILM/MEDIA LIST: Do not respond to the letter or accept the new contracts proposed by Taylor & Francis at htis point (unles, of course, you want to). A response is being coordinated. Additional conversations scheduled for the NECS conference.

Vinzenz Hediger @vinzenzhediger.bsky.social · Jun 6

Amsterdam University Press is sending out letters today notifying series editors and authors that they have been taken over – or shall we say: annexed? – by Taylor & Francis. Not a good day. The evil empire of academic publishing is growing.

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Catherine Grant @filmstudiesff.bsky.social · Jun 1

SUPERB! The Film Atlas is a collaboration between the International Federation of Film Archives and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is - or aims to be - an interactive global map of the history of film technology. The site has just gone live and it is free to use for all.
www.filmatlas.com

FILM ATLAS

The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) brings together institutions dedicated to rescuing of films both as art and as historical documents

www.filmatlas.com

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Slava Greenberg 🩼🏳️‍⚧️✡️🇺🇦 in 🇳🇱 for 🍉 @slavagreenberg.bsky.social · May 19

Queer and trans film and media scholars, SCMS QTC members, please help me retire as the senior co-chair of @scmsqtc.bsky.social!

I am old & tired.

We’re looking for secretary nominees until the 25th to hold elections. It’s a 3 year term: secretary ➡️ junior co-chair ➡️ senior co-chair ➡️ retirement.

SCMS Queer and Trans Caucus @scmsqtc.bsky.social · May 13

Dear QTC members,

We are looking for a new caucus Secretary!

If you are interested in nominating yourself for this position, please email a bio of 100-200 words and a platform of 200-300 words to [email protected] by the end of the day on Friday, May 16th.

MORE INFO ⬇️

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Jules O’Dwyer @julesod.bsky.social · May 9

Check out the CFP for this year’s World Picture conference hosted in collaboration w/ brilliant colleagues at UvA @jacobengelberg.bsky.social @rhysteven.bsky.social & Abe Geil in November! necs.org/news/calls-f...

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Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Apr 16

a nice thing about dutch academia is a copyright amendment that allows for the open publication of short scholarly works 6 months after their initial publication. this means that my chapter on Call Me by Your Name is now freely accessible! you can find it in the URL on my profile.

Text that reads: "Taverne Amendment. The Taverne Amendment allows researchers to share the final published version (Version of Record) of short scientific works via the institutional repository after an embargo period, even if they were published behind a paywall.
"The maker of a short scientific work, the research for which has been paid for in whole or in part by Dutch public funds, shall be entitled to make that work available to the public for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work." (Dutch Copyright Act 2015)
Together, Dutch universities have decided to interpret 'short scientific work' as journal articles, proceedings papers and book chapters, and 'a reasonable period of time' as six months."

the title page of the chapter, reading: "10. Call Me Bi Any Other Name: Anal Monstration, Formal Bisexualization, Gay Indigestion. Jacob Engelberg."

a frame from the film Call Me by Your Name. Elio leans against the car and watches Oliver kissing Chiara.

a frame from the film Call Me by Your Name. Elio looks up from Marzia's crotch as they have sex.

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Gary Needham @garyneedham.bsky.social · Apr 1

As part of the Homotopia takeover of Museum of Liverpool and the Holly Johnson exhibition (Sat 5th April), @mbpearl.bsky.social and myself will be talking "Don't Relax! Culture, Protest, and Music during the AIDS Crisis" event info here: www.homotopia.net/events/homot...

Homotopia Takeover Day - homotopia

Saturday 5 April 2025, Lecture Theatre, Museum of Liverpool The inaugural Homotopia Takeover presents a line-up of live music, talks and provocations responding to The Holly Johnson Story. Join us...

www.homotopia.net

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Gary Needham @garyneedham.bsky.social · Mar 15

In memory of her passing my favourite Linda Williams media moment is just at the end of an old television documentary series on the history of pornography. She did have a soft spot for 'Boys in the Sand' (1972).

@screeningsex.bsky.social @scmstudies.bsky.social @scmsadultfilm.bsky.social

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