Maria San Filippo

Maria San Filippo is an American author and educator. Her first book, The B Word, won the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction; ^{[1] [2]} she also won the 2023 award for Appropriate Behavior. ^{[3] [4]}

San Filippo is also an associate professor at Emerson College. ^[5]

Education

San Filippo attended the London School of Economics before receiving a bachelor of arts in Film Studies and Political from Wellesley College. ^[5] She went on to receive a master of arts fin Cinema Studies from New York University, ^[6] and Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. ^[5]

In the 2020–21 school year, San Filippo was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. ^[6]

Career

Aside from writing, San Filippo has been a lecturer at Wellesley College (2004, 2010–2013), University of California, Los Angeles (2007-2008), Harvard University (2010-2013), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2012); Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wellesley College (2008-2010); research associate at Five College Women's Studies Research Center (2012-2013); visiting assistant professor at Indiana University, Bloomington (2012-2013); assistant professor and director at University of the Arts (2016-2020); and assistant then associate professor at Goucher College (2016-2020). ^[5] She has taught visual and media arts, communication and media studies, film and media studies, and gender studies. ^[5]

San Filippo is currently an associate professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College. ^{[5] [6]} Her academic work focuses "on screen media’s intersections with gender and sexuality, focusing on feminist and queer works of contemporary film and television." ^[6] She is also editor-in-chief of New Review of Film & Television Studies. ^[5]

Selected texts

The B Word (2013)

The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television was published April 1, 2013 by Indiana University Press. In 2014, the book won the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. ^{[1] [2]}

Appropriate Behavior (2022)

Appropriate Behavior, published in 2022 by McGill–Queen's University Press, also won the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction, in 2023.

Publications

Articles and book chapters

• “Boardwalk Xanadu: Time and Place in The King of Marvin Gardens and Atlantic City,” Senses of Cinema 13 (2001).
• “What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One,” Film History 13.2 (2001): 216–225.
• “Two Women: The Dialectical Sexual Persona of Catherine Deneuve,” Senses of Cinema 23 (2002). Quoted in program notes for Deneuve retrospective at LACMA, March 2009.
• “The ‘Other’ Dreamgirl: Female Bisexuality as the ‘Dark Secret’ of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive,” Looking Both Ways: Bisexuality and the Media, special issue of Journal of Bisexuality 7.2 (2007): 15-49.
• “(Re)Constructing Bisexual Space in Contemporary Film/Culture,” Queer Space, special issue, English Language Notes, 45.2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 141-147.
• “Controversy and Compromise in the Code’s Waning Years: Hollywood Takes a Walk on the Wild Side,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 26.5 (Fall 2009): 372–384.
• “Unthinking Heterocentrism: Bisexual Representability in Art Cinema.” In Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, ed. Rosalind A. Galt and Karl Schoonover (Oxford UP, 2010), 75–91.
• “A Cinema of Recession: Micro-budgeting, Micro-drama, and the ‘Mumblecore’ Movement,” Slow Film, special issue of CineAction 85 (2011): 2-11. Supplementary “Mumblecore Montage”
• “More Than Buddies: Wedding Crashers and the Bromance as Comedy of (Re)Marriage Equality.”  In Millennial Masculinity: Men in Contemporary American Cinema, ed. Timothy Shary (Wayne State UP, 2013), 181–199. “Highly Recommended” by Choice
• “A Room of Its Own: Screening Space and Spectatorial Experience in Yang Fudong’s Fifth Night and Omer Fast’s Continuity,” Art + Film, special issue of CineAction 91 (Fall 2013): 14-18.
• “Television’s Mid-life Crisis: Minimalism and Middle-Aged Masculinity in In Treatment and Louie,” Reevaluating Television, special issue of Cinephile 9.1 (Spring 2013): 21–25.
• “Before and After AfterEllen.com: On-line Queer Cinephile Communities as Critical Counterpublics.” In Film Criticism in the Digital Age: Media,Purposes, and the Status of the Critic, ed. Mattias Frey and Cecilia Sayad (Rutgers UP, 2015), 117–136. Best Essay in an Edited Collection Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2016.
• “Growing Old Together: Linklater’s Before Trilogy in the Twilight Years of Art House Distribution,” Film Quarterly 68.3 (Spring 2015): 53–59.
• “‘Selling Film’ in the summer of 2015: Midnight Sun, Il Cinema Ritrovato, and Karlovy Vary,” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Autumn 2015.
• “A Tale of Two Suzannes: À nos amours (For Our Loves, 1983) and Suzanne (2013),” Senses of Cinema 77, December 2015.
• Indie Reframed: Women's Filmmaking and Contemporary American Independent Cinema (2016)
• “Sexual In-betweener/Industry In-betweener: The Career and Films of Lisa Cholodenko," in Indie Reframed: Women’s Filmmaking and Contemporary American Independent Cinema, edited by Linda Badley, Claire Perkins, and Michele Schreiber (Edinburgh UP, 2016), 221–238.
• “Transparent Family Values: Unmasking Sitcom Myths of Gender, Sex(uality), and Money," in The Sitcom Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Mary M. Dalton and Laura R. Linder (SUNY Press, 2016), 305–318. Supplementary Interview.
• “‘Art Porn’ Provocauteurs: Queer Feminist Performances of Embodiment in the Work of Catherine Breillat and Lena Dunham,” Performance and the Body, special issue of Velvet Light Trap 77 (Spring 2016): 28-49. Reprinted in Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls: Feminism, Post-Feminism, Authenticity, and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television, edited by Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan (Palgrave, 2017), 165-180.
• “Doing Time: Queer Temporalities and Orange Is the New Black," in The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital Delivery, and Instant Access, edited by Myc Wiatrowski and Cory Barker (McFarland, 2017), 75–97.
• “The Politics of Fluidity: Representing Bisexualities in 21st Century Screen Media," in TheRoutledge Companion to Media, Sex, and Sexuality, edited by Feona Attwood, Brian McNair, and Clarissa Smith (Routledge, 2017), 70–80.
• “‘Just Because I’m a Lesbian Doesn’t Mean I’m Evolved’: The ‘Bad Queer’ Women's Comedic Web Series,” Bad Objects, special issue of The Velvet Light Trap 85 (Spring 2020): 65-77.
• “Breaking Upwards: The Creative Uncoupling of Desiree Akhavan and Ingrid Jungermann,” Independent Women: From Film to Television, special issue of Feminist Media Studies, edited by Claire Perkins and  Michele Schreiber, 19.7 (2019): 991–1008. Published by Routledge, 2021. Reprinted in After “Happily Ever After”: Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age, edited by Maria San Filippo (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2021), 275–300.
• “Open (to) Marriage: Saving Sanctioned Coupling through Consensual Non-Monogamy Narratives," in Imagining ‘We’ in the Age of ‘I,’: Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture, edited by Mary Harrod, Suzanne Leonard, and Diane Negra (Routledge, 2021), 93–109.
• “Mumblecore’s Second Act: Millennial Indie Moviemaking’s Migration to Television," in Indie TV, edited by James Lyons and Yannis Tzioumakis, Routledge, forthcoming March 2022.
• “Living in the Gray Area: Bisexual Signification in Desiree Akhavan’s The Bisexual," in Television Studies in Queer Times, edited by Hollis Griffin, Routledge. Contracted and manuscript under review.
• “The Re-Emergence of Radical Romantic Comedy," in The Oxford Handbook of Screen Comedy, edited by William Costanzo and Peter Kunze, chapter invited for proposal under review.
• “Full-Frontal Feminism: Jane Campion’s Sex Scenes," in Screening Sex: The Sex Scene, edited by Darren Kerr and Donna Peberdy, chapter invited for proposal under review.
• “In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003).” Screening Adult Cinema, edited by Desirae Embree, Finley Freibert, and Peter Alilunas, essay invited for collection contracted at Routledge.

Books

• The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television (2013)
• Provocauteurs and Provocations: Screening Sex in 21st Century Media (2021)
• Appropriate Behavior (2022)

Book reviews

• “American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions by Peter Lev,” Senses of Cinema 17 (2001).
• “Atom Egoyan by Carole Desbarats et al.,” Senses of Cinema 20 (2002).
• “Projecting Paranoia: Conspiratorial Visions in American Film by Ray Pratt,” Cineaste 27.2 (2002): 51-52.
• “Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-79 by David Cook,” Cineaste 28.2 (2003): 53-54.
• “Screen Chemistry: The Power of 2 by Martha Nochimson,” Cineaste 28.4 (2003): 68-69.
• “Performing American Masculinities: The 21st-Century Man in Popular Culture by Elwood Watson and Marc Edward Shaw, ed.,” Cinema Journal 53.1 (Fall 2013): 184-188.

Criticism and commentaries

• “Maude & Me; Or, Responsibilities of a Feminist Media Critic,” Flow, November 16, 2021.
• Themed Playlist: “Filming Abortion,” Centre for Screen Cultures, November 11, 2021.
• “The rom-com is alive and well and breaking new conventions,” The Boston Globe, September 19, 2021.
• “The Sex Scene Isn’t Disappearing…it’s simply shifting from clichéd fantasy to messy reality,” The Conversation, May 20, 2021. Reprinted in Salon, May 29, 2021.
• Themed Playlist (collaboratively created): “Post-Romantic Comedy,” Centre for Screen Cultures, May 27, 2021.
• “Now Is the Time of Monsters: A Roundtable on Contemporary Horror” (Introduction). NRFTS Blog (2021).
• Themed Playlist: “Screening Sexual Provocation,” Centre for Screen Cultures, March 18, 2021.
• “The Year of Screening Provocatively,” Indiana University Press Blog, February 8, 2021.
• “White Riot: A Joker Roundtable” (Introduction). NRFTS Blog (2021).
• “Serial Offender: The Bisexual (2018),” Journal of Bisexuality 20.3 (2020).
• “Visible: Out on Television”: an LGBTQ TV Roundtable, Los Angeles Review of Books, June 23, 2020.
• “The Revolutionary Thighs of Hannah Horvath,” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 21, 2017.
• “A Real Young Girl: Catherine Breillat’s Adolescent Wonderland,” Senses of Cinema 80 (2016).
• “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One,” National Film Registry, Library of Congress (2016).
• “Female Trouble: Representing Transwomen in The Danish Girl and The New Girlfriend,” Journal of Bisexuality, 16.3 (2016): 403-407.
• “Orgasm, Inc.,” Cineaste 36.1 (2011): 80.
• “Seeds of Summer,” War Films/Female Directors special issue of CineAction 81 (2010): 62-64.
• “Word Is Out,” Cineaste 35.3 (2010).
• “The Windmill Movie,” Cineaste 35.1 (2010): 88.
• “Malady of Death,” Calculated Risks exhibit catalog, Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Fall 2010.
• “Outrage,” Cineaste 34.4 (2009): 80.
• “For the Bible Tells Me So,” Cineaste 33.2 (2008): 88.
• “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One & Take 2 ½,” Cineaste 31.2 (2006): 48-49.
• “Producing Adults,” Girlfriends 11.7 (2005): 55.
• “Open My Heart,” Girlfriends 11.6 (2005): 57.
• “Lost in Translation,” Cineaste 29.1 (2004): 26-28.
• “Hidden Wars of Desert Storm,” Cineaste 27.4 (2001): 96.
• “Apocalypse Now Redux,” Senses of Cinema 16 (2001).
• “Long Night’s Journey into Day,” Cineaste 26.3 (2001): 72.
• “Barbie Nation,” Cineaste 26.2 (2001): 64.
• “Amores Perros,” Senses of Cinema 13 (2001).

Editor

• After "Happily Ever After": Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age (2021)
• Independent Women: From Film to Television (2021)

Festival reviews

• “Thin Air, Long Lines: 45th Telluride Film Festival,” Senses of Cinema 89 (2018).
• “The 49th Sydney Film Festival,” Scope (2003).
• “4th Bangkok Film Festival,” Senses of Cinema 18 (2002).
• “25th Atlanta Film & Video Festival,” Senses of Cinema 15 (2001).
• “20th Sundance Film Festival,” Senses of Cinema 12 (2001).

In Media Res posts

• “Already Out Queer Celebrity: Kate McKinnon’s Post-Closet Representational Politics.” Female Comedians theme week, In Media Res, March 11, 2020.
• “Breaking Upwards: The Creative Uncoupling of Desiree Akhavan and Ingrid Jungermann.” Media Collaborations theme week, In Media Res, November 12, 2019.
• “Learning In/humanity through Film in Dogtooth and The Wolfpack.” Movies about Movies theme week, In Media Res, April 20–24, 2015. Selected by IMR editors as a Favorite Post of 2015.
• “The Penis as Feminist Tool in Girls and Top of the Lake.” Just Add Nudity! theme week, In Media Res, October 6–10, 2014.
• “Doing Time: Queer Temporalities and Orange Is the New Black,“ Orange Is the New Black theme week [curator], In Media Res, March 10–14, 2014.
• “Owning Her Abjection: Lena Dunham’s Queer Feminist Sexual Politics,”
• HBO’s Girls and the White Box theme week, In Media Res, Jan. 7, 2013.
• “Enlightened or Not?: How HBO Learned to Trust Its Viewers But Not Its Shows,” Save Our Shows theme week [co-curator], In Media Res, May 14–18, 2012.
• “Ultimate Surrender: Lesbian Porn Not Just for Straight Sport,” Sex and the Internet theme week, In Media Res, February 15, 2011.

Videographic criticism

• “The Close-Up in Call Me by Your Name”

References

1. "Winners of the 26th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Announced". Lambda Literary. 2014-06-03. Archived from the original on 2021-09-12. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
2. bent (2014-06-03). "Full List of 2014 Lambda Literary Award Winners". IndieWire. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
3. "2023 Winners". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 2023-06-10.
4. Schaub, Michael (2023-06-12). "2023 Lambda Literary Award Winners Are Revealed". Kirkus Reviews . Retrieved 2023-06-13.
5. "About". Maria San Filippo. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
6. "Maria San Filippo". Emerson College. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved 2022-01-12.