Research Bio

Damon R. Young is a scholar of film and media studies, critical theory and French whose research focuses on the politics and aesthetics of cultural expression, including how media forms (literary, cinematic, and digital) shape subjectivity, identity, and desire. His first book, Making Sex Public and Other Cinematic Fantasies (Duke, 2018) was shortlisted for the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Book Prize. His next book project, Century of the Selfie, is forthcoming with Harvard, and asks: "Is the self of Rousseau's Confessions the same as the self of the selfie?" Most recently, he co-edited a special issue of Representations (with Stephen Best and Mia You) on "Meme Aesthetics," examining the political functions, registers of speech and aesthetic inheritances of this ubiquitous cultural form.

Research Expertise and Interest

film theory, digital media, global art cinema, gender and sexuality studies, critical theory