Australian Queer Screens: Diversity and Social Change in Film and TV - Softcover

Stuart Richards; Scott McKinnon; Whitney Monaghan; Rob Cover

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798765128435

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic (UK), 2026

Synopsis

This is the first book-length study of Australia’s rich history of LGBTQ+ film and television, covering histories, production, screen representation and audience identities.

Despite a long-standing international field of queer media studies, Australian scholarship has only recently emerged. Screen diversity in Australia is important to cultural policy, education and social harmony. This book presents new scholarship on the role and significance of gender- and sexually-diverse characters, themes and narratives on Australian screens, as Australian film and television has a very rich history of representing LGBTQ+, gender- and sexually-diverse characters, stories and themes.

The chapters in this book cover a broad range of areas to provide a comprehensive overview of LGBTQ+ film and television in Australia, including: the history and formation of LGBTQ+ screen representation in such film and TV series as Dad and Dave Come To Town, Lovers and Luggers, Cop Shop, Division 4, and Homicide; production perspectives and challenges, including insights from screen writers and actors; the significance of LGBTQ+ film festivals as part of Australian cultural heritage; analyses of key Australian queer film and TV series to draw out themes that foreground their ‘Australianness’, including The Set, Victims, and Boys in the Band, among others; and perspectives on audience and culture, including the utility and value of LGBTQ+ screen representation to identity, belonging and social change.

About this title

About the Authors

Rob Cover is Professor of Digital Communication and Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He leads a number of major funded research projects on young people, health and wellbeing and digital and broadcast media. The author of around one hundred journal articles and chapters, he publishes widely on topics related to digital cultures in the context of social identities, young people, suicide prevention and resilience. Rob is the author of ten books, including: Identity in the COVID-19 Years (Bloomsbury, 2024), Identity and Digital Communication: Concepts, Theories, Practices (2023), Fake News in Digital Culture (2022), Emergent Identities: New Sexualities, Gender and Relationships in a Digital Era (2019), Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self (2016), and Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity: Unliveable Lives? (2016). He is a co-editor of several anthologies including: Queer Studies in Education (2024), The Routledge Handbook of Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights (2024) and is co-editor of The Elgar Encyclopedia of Queer Studies (2025).

Whitney Monaghan is Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Monash University, Australia. Her current research examines LGBTIQ representation on screen. She is the author of Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: Not ‘Just a Phase’ (2016), and co-author of Queer Theory Now: From
Foundations to Futures (2020). She is also a co-ordinator of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival.

Stuart Richards is Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of South Australia. He is author of The Queer Film Festival: Popcorn & Politics (2016) and Agatha Christie & Gothic Horror (2024). He is the co-curator of the Adelaide Queer Film Festival.

Scott McKinnon is Assistant Director at the National Library of Australia and Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Australia. A historian and curator, Scott has published extensively on histories of queer activism, culture and community in Australia, among other topics. He is the author of Gay Men at the Movies: Cinema, Memory and the History of a Gay Male Community (2016) and the co-editor of Disasters in Australia and New Zealand: Historical Approaches to Understanding Catastrophe (2020).

Tinonee Pym is Research Associate at Adelaide University, South Australia. Her research focuses on LGBTIQA+ communities, including digital cultures and health, queer screen media audiences, and LGBTIQA+ histories and life narratives. She is currently working on the ARC Discovery project Locating LGBTIQA+ youth in the archive: Telling new stories for belonging.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic (UK)
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798765128435
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256