Harry Benshoff
Occupation / Title:Date of birth:25/01/1963
Birthplace:Pennsylvania, USA
Biography
Harry M. Benshoff is a professor and researcher in media arts, researching extensively about film theory, film genre, multiculturalism, film history, queer theory and animation labour.
Career outline
In 1985, he graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with a BA in English. After three years at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, he decided to pursue film and media studies and received an MA and PhD in Critical Studies from University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. He taught at the University of California before becoming a professor at the University of North Texas.
At the University of North Texas, he teaches several different courses in film, such as “Film and Television Analysis,” “African American Film,” “Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Film and Video,” and “Gender and Sexuality in the Horror Film.” He also conducts a series of “Film Authors” featuring noted directors.
Benshoff has since become an extremely prominent author on several topics in film and media, including queer theory, animation labour, fan cultures, blaxploitation horror films, and Hollywood LSD films. Benshoff authored Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Manchester University Press, 1997), and co-authored America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies (Blackwell Publishers, 2004), Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) and Queer Cinema: The Film Reader (Routledge, 2004). He has also written essays on Dark Shadows fan cultures, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Brokeback Mountain, and labour representation in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
He has been nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Lambda Literary Award for Drama.
References:
http://mediaarts.unt.edu/content/harry-m-benshoff
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc50.2008/BrokbkMtn/bio.html
http://www.animationjournal.com/abstracts/essays/Benshoff.html