Quinn Miller’s arrival in Eugene last year brought a new expert in the field of queer media studies to the University of Oregon.

Prior to arriving at the UO, Miller spent two years in Qatar serving as a visiting assistant professor of media culture in Northwestern University in Qatar’s (NU-Q) School of Communication.

In his current position as an assistant professor in the UO’s English department, Miller is focusing on queer and trans forms of media representation.

“This focus illuminates an unexpected history of queer trans cultural production within the media industries," Miller said. “It also demonstrates the artistic sophistication of disparaged media texts, like the most seemingly superficial of sitcoms.”

Producing scholarship on film, television and new media that explores gender, sexuality and race remains Miller’s passion. In looking for work after Qatar, he felt that the UO allowed him a distinct opportunity to explore this passion.

“The UO has exciting cinema studies and queer studies programs, and it was unique” that the university searched for someone who specializes in both and could combine them into a single specialty, he said.  “My highest hope was that I could find a position teaching queer media studies rather than queer studies or media studies separately.”

His current research explores the gender/queer history of U.S. television comedy. Miller uses historical research to examine contemporary media, power relations and queer trans culture in new ways.

This term, Miller is teaching the class “Queer Representation, Cinema and Media Studies,” and the graduate seminar “Queering TV Studies.”

Miller graduated from the University of Chicago in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in gender studies, and earned his doctorate in screen cultures from Northwestern University in 2010.

Aside from his positions at NU-Q and the UO, Miller has worked as an adjunct assistant professor of gender studies at Hampshire College and as a visiting instructor in gender studies at Mount Holyoke College.

- by Taylor Robertson, UO Office of Strategic Communications intern