Thomas Waugh

For the Canadian politician, see Thomas Frederick Waugh.
Thomas Waugh
Born1948 (age 76–77)
London, Ontario, Canada
OccupationAcademic, Author, Critic, Programmer, Activist
Period1970s-present
Notable worksShow Us Life: Towards a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary

Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall
The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas

Conscience of Cinema: The Work of Joris Ivens, 1912-1989

Thomas Waugh is a Canadian critic, lecturer, author, actor, and activist,[1][2][3] best known for his extensive work on documentary film and eroticism in the history of LGBT cinema and art.[4] A professor emeritus at Concordia University,[5] he taught 41 years in the film studies program of the School of Cinema and held a research chair in documentary film and sexual representation. He was also the director of the Concordia HIV/AIDS Project, 1993-2017, a program providing a platform for research and conversations involving HIV/AIDS in the Montréal area.[6]

Career

A graduate of Columbia University, Waugh wrote film criticism and history articles for publications such as Jump Cut and The Body Politic before publishing his first book, Show Us Life: Towards a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary, in 1984.

His 1996 book, Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall, took 13 years to research and write.[7] Its release was delayed eight full months after its initial planned publication date, due to difficulty finding a printer willing to handle the book's sexually explicit homoerotic imagery.[8]

He is a two-time Lambda Literary Award nominee, garnering nominations in the Visual Arts category at the 15th Lambda Literary Awards in 2003 for Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics From Before Stonewall,[9] and at the 17th Lambda Literary Awards in 2005 for Lust Unearthed: Vintage Gay Graphics from the DuBek Collection.[10] He is also the recipient of the SCMS (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award for The Conscience of Cinema: The Work of Joris Ivens, 1912-1989.

Waugh has also served on the board of Cinema Politica,[11] has been active with the Quebec Gay Archives,[12] and is coeditor with Matthew Hays of the Queer Film Classics series of 19 monographs on LGBT film, published by Arsenal Pulp Press.[13] In 2013 Waugh, Ryan Conrad and Cinema Politica raised funds on Indiegogo to produce and distribute a documentary film about the Russian LGBT organization Children-404.[14]

In 2010, Waugh and filmmaker Kim Simard launched the Queer Media Database Canada-Québec, an online database project to collect and publish information about LGBT films and videos made in Canada and the personalities involved in their creation.[15] The project was based in part on his 2006 book The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas.

Works

  • Who Are We?, A Very Natural Thing, The Naked Civil Servant: Films By Gays For Gays (1977)
  • Show Us Life: Towards a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary (1984)
  • Men's Pornography: Gay vs. Straight (1985)
  • Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall (1996)
  • The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema (2000)
  • Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics From Before Stonewall (2002)
  • Lust Unearthed: Vintage Gay Graphics from the DuBek Collection (2004)
  • The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas (2006)
  • Gay Art: A Historic Collection (2006)
  • Comin' At Ya! The Homoerotic 3-D Photographs of Denny Denfield (2007, with David L. Chapman)
  • Montreal Main (2010, with Jason Garrison)
  • Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada (2010, with Michael Baker and Ezra Winton)
  • The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film (2011)
  • The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson (2013, with Brenda Longfellow and Scott MacKenzie)
  • The Conscience of Cinema: The Works of Joris Ivens, 1912-1989 (2016)
  • I Confess! Constructing the Sexual Self In the Internet Age (2019, edited with Brandon Arroyo)

References

  1. ^ |name=xtra>Daniel Allen Cox
  2. ^ Waugh, Thomas (8 August 2019). "My Coming Out: 'I'm Afraid This Letter Is Going To Cause You Both A Lot Of Pain". Montreal Gazette.
  3. ^ "Naked Lunch: An interview with Thomas Waugh". Xtra!, January 5, 2010.
  4. ^ "Naked Lunch: An interview with Thomas Waugh". Xtra!, January 5, 2010.
  5. ^ "Filling the void of LGBT cultural amnesia; Concordia profs at the helm of book series revisiting 21 influential movies". Montreal Gazette, January 25, 2012.
  6. ^ Braganza, Chantal (January 14, 2015). "The evolution of porn studies". University Affairs. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
  7. ^ "Behind shocking gay photos, this is a serious study". Edmonton Journal, November 30, 1996.
  8. ^ "Gay history fit to print: Book slated for sale by early November". The Globe and Mail, September 26, 1996.
  9. ^ "15th Lambda Literary Awards". Lambda Literary Foundation, July 9, 2003.
  10. ^ "17th Lambda Literary Awards". Lambda Literary Foundation, July 9, 2005.
  11. ^ "Cinema should encourage debate". National Post, March 19, 2010.
  12. ^ "Making things perfectly queer" Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine. Concordia News, March 1, 2013.
  13. ^ "Queer Film Classics Film Book Series ed. by Thomas Waugh, Matthew Hays (review)". Journal of Film and Video (Volume 66, Number 2), Summer 2014. pp. 48-50.
  14. ^ "Russian film about LGBTQ youth seeks funds". Windy City Times, November 5, 2013.
  15. ^ "Online database of queer Canadian movies launching at Toronto Pride". The Globe and Mail, June 24, 2015.