Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Queer visual cultures
- Contemporary critical and political theory
- Marginal (independent, underground, experimental) media cultures
Current research
Robert’s research interests lie at the intersection of film and queer visual cultures, focusing particularly on the history/historiography of queer activism on screen, on underground and experimental media cultures, and on cinema and contemporary critical theory.
At present, Robert is working on a monograph stemming from his PhD thesis, which examines the history, theory, and politics underscoring a range of oppositional media practices emerging during the first two decades of the AIDS crisis. Promiscuous in its scope and methodology, this project traces the cultural reverberations of numerous shifts in queer thought and direct-action taking place throughout the 1980s and 1990s, reflecting on the ways that “emergent” oppositional sentiments transformed and expanded as a consequence of their drift from street to screen. Two articles linked to this research are due out, over the coming year, in both JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture.
In addition to this, Robert is in the early stages of developing a research project on queer film history and abolitionist thought. This work will provide an analysis of numerous junctures in the history of queer screen cultures, critical race theory, and various forms and iterations of anti-prison activism. Continuing the interdisciplinary approach of his past research—bringing together historical, theoretical, and political concerns—the project argues that queer cinema has long been a site where carceral logics and, indeed, carcerality itself, has been contested. As such, it aims to re-assess some currently guiding assumptions relating to what an effective queer film historiography might look like, what we give leverage to in our archives of political revolt, and, ultimately, how we narrate the sprawled, intersectional histories of queer sustenance and opposition.
Select publications:
(Forthcoming) "In Pursuit of The Emerald City: Cable Access Television and the Gay 1970s," Cultural Critique.
"Sex, or the Illegible: AIDS Video Art and the Erotics of Abstraction," Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 45, no. 1-2 (2023), 223-248.
"'Death in the Streets, Blood on Your Hands': Chocolate Babies and the End of AIDS," JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 62, no. 3 (2023), 107-131.