About
Sean M. Donovan is a doctoral candidate in Film, Television, & Media at the University of Michigan. A specialist in LGBTQ media, Sean's dissertation explores how nostalgia underpins LGBTQ communities's affective investment in media cultures, shaping how we understand the past and organizing community belonging, analyzing media texts from hookup apps to arthouse cinema. His M.A. thesis discussed the television series Hannibal (NBC, 2013 - 2015) and its efforts to deploy iconographies of horror to "turn back the clock" on 2010s LGBTQ respectability politics, and queer "knowledge" itself, a piece later published in the online journal Gender Forum. Sean's undergraduate thesis tackled Kenneth Anger and experimental approaches to destabilizing the queer body on screen. Across campus Sean served as the coordinator of Doing Queer Studies Now (DQSN), a graduate student working group devoted to bringing guest speakers to campus on issues of gender and sexuality, as well as providing a forum for grad student conversation and ideas. Outside of the academy, Sean is active in film festival work, serving as the curator of OutNight, the Ann Arbor Film Festival's night dedicated to experimental LGBTQ cinema, since 2019. He previously worked for Reel Affirmations, a LGBTQ film festival in Washington D.C. Some of Sean's movie reviews and shorter pieces can be found on the popular cinephile blog The Film Experience.
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