Recently, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies awarded FTVM Ph.D. alumnus and lecturer Peter Alilunas the Award of Distinction in their dissertation of the year competition. 

The SCMS awards committee stated, “Attending carefully to questions of technology, commerce, and law, Alilunas’s dissertation presents a work of true intellectual imagination. While other scholars tackling pornography explored the topic largely from a theoretical or formal perspective, Alilunas delves into his subject from a historical, industrial, and legal perspective, drawing on an incredible use of primary-source research…It is not only a finely written, well-historicized account of the development of the adult film industry in the context of technological and regulatory changes in the 1970s, but also a study that will change how we understand the development and use of video, one of the major technological developments in media history.”

Congratulations, Peter!