Associate Professor
About
Hollis Griffin teaches and researches the cultural politics of television, the internet, and social media, particularly as they intersect with affect, sexuality, and questions of space/place. His book, Feeling Normal: Sexuality and Media Criticism in the Digital Age (Indiana, 2017), was named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2017 by Choice, the publication of the American Library Association. In it, he demonstrates how LGBTQ+ bars and clubs in U.S. urban centers provide a historical precedent for thinking about how LGBTQ+ consumers are courted by the cultural industries in the context of digital media production, distribution, and reception.
He has also published research in New Media & Society, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Feminist Media Histories, Popular Communication, Television & New Media, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Popular Film and Television and the anthologies Ryan Murphy’s Queer America (Routledge, 2022), The Routledge Companion to Urban Media and Communication (Routledge, 2019), and A Companion to Reality Television (Wiley, 2014). Hollis also edited Television Studies in Queer Times (Routledge, 2023), a collection of essays that consider LGBTQ+ television programming in the context of distribution via streaming platforms.
Hollis's next single-author book project examines the role of New York City in the U.S. cultural imaginary, considering mediated encounters with the city in cinema, television, and online media as they are contoured by sprawl, gentrification, and shifts in the political economy of the media industries. Objects of analysis include musicals, TikTok dance challenges, sitcoms, police dramas, and Facebook groups.
Finally, he is also active in the field of media studies, having served on the editorial boards of Television & New Media; Journal of Cinema and Media Studies; Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; Communication, Culture, and Critique; Film Criticism; and Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture. He was elected to a three-year term on the Board of Directors for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies from 2018 to 2021; he served as secretary from 2019 to 2021.
Recent publications:
"Doing Bad Film History: Lessons on Archive and Method from John Waters," The Routledge Companion to American Film History. Pam Wojcik and Paula Massood, Eds. New York: Routledge, 2025. 53-63.
"Sexual Diversity and Streaming Television: Toward a Platform Studies Approach to Analyzing LGBTQ+ TV." Convergence 30.4 (August 2024): 1459-1473. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565241265508
“When Mass Culture Meets High Culture: Reality Television and Big Data at the Art Museum.” Communication, Culture and Critique 17.1 (March 2024): 40-47.
Television Studies in Queer Times. Ed. New York: Routledge, 2023.
"The Politics of Merely Following: Witnessing AIDS on Instagram." New Media & Society 24.1 (2022): 90-104.
"It’s a Sin: AIDS as Incipient Crisis." European Journal of Cultural Studies (2022): 115-121.
“I Always Knew I Wasn’t Gonna Be Long on this Earth: Pose and the AIDS Crisis,” Ryan Murphy’s Queer America. Brenda R. Weber and David Greven, Eds. New York: Routledge, 2022. 185-196.
"Living Through It: Anger, Laughter, and Internet Memes in Dark Times." International Journal of Cultural Studies 24.3 (2021): 381-397.
