Gary Needham
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garyneedham.bsky.social
Gary Needham
@garyneedham.bsky.social
610 followers 460 following 290 posts
he/they, film and screen media, the University of Liverpool - queer, autistic, Scottish - currently writing 'Sex, Guys, and Videotape: American Independent Cinema and the AIDS Crisis' and co-authoring the Queer Film Classic on 'Buddies' (1985)
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garyneedham.bsky.social
Age yourself with gaming 🎮
November 12, 2025 at 9:17 AM
garyneedham.bsky.social
A few pics from the launch for photographer Ming De Nasty's "Residents" project at Liverpool's Open Eye Gallery. Part of city-wide arts festival Homotopia. The portrait exhibition captures Liverpool's broad LGBTQAI+ community around politics, identity, and place.

www.homotopia.net/events/resid...
A person standing in front of a photograph in a gallery space and giving a talk Three people standing looking at the camera. The person in the middle is holding a wine glass A board the describes an exhibition called Residents with a green and red graphic A red board outside a gallery that includes two portraits of Liverpool trans and queer people
November 9, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by Gary Needham
jacobengelberg.bsky.social
the preface & introduction of my forthcoming book is now freely available to read! & you can also pre-order it at 50% off buff.ly/ehSkevd
dukepress.bsky.social Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 13d
In "Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression," @jacobengelberg.bsky.social reimagines queer film studies, using transgressive cinematic figures to challenge binary notions of sexuality. #QueerStudies #FilmStudies Read the intro now and preorder at 50% off during our fall sale! buff.ly/ehSkevd
The cover features a photograph of a man in a black tank top and a woman in a velvet dress mid-embrace, a second woman in a sequined gown partially obscured by their figures. The photograph is rotated and superimposed upon itself twice across the cover. The title appears in a single line of white text across the center of the image, and the author's name in white text rotated ninety degrees along the bottom right-hand corner.
October 30, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Reposted by Gary Needham
bookshop.org
Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House.

Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity.

They are not the same.
October 30, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Gary Needham
alexhanna.bsky.social
Great day for this special issue on critical aunty studies.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Critical aunty studies: an auntroduction
Though aunties are ubiquitous figures across global public cultures, they have received limited scholarly attention. Given the location of these women, femme, and queer figures at the periphery of ...
www.tandfonline.com
October 28, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Gary Needham
emmiemalone.bsky.social
Can’t help but wonder if I would still be employed right now and, if so, for how long if I hadn’t left my position in Texas in the fall.
adamsteinbaugh.bsky.social Adam Steinbaugh @adamsteinbaugh.bsky.social · 26d
A Texas public university administrator's notes for a meeting with faculty.

"No daylight": faculty "cannot discuss or teach anything regarding transgender - only male and female." They must "scrub" syllabi for "transgender items."

And keep everything out of writing: "Don't email; talk directly."
Notes from "Faculty Meetings": 1. From Tech System Chancellor through the Vice Chancellor and General Council to our President, Provost and General Council: Executive order of the President Executive Order of the Governor HB229 2. These documents direct that there are only two sexes: male and female 3. With regard to curriculum and what is discussed in the classroom and as part of the course, you cannot discuss or teach anything regarding transgender - only male and female 4. If you decide not to do this, you are on your own, no backing from the university, and you are placing your position at peril (Texas A&M) 5. Questions have been raised and are being asked, but for now a complete moratorium is what is expected. 6. No daylight on this - tell FACULTY NOW 7. Trans names are recognition in class are also a problem, use given/legal names, not preferred names 8. Check course descriptions to scrub for transgender items - Rewrite syllabus if necessary 9. Take preferred pronouns out of email signatures (expect a "standard" email signature to come from Communication & Marketing soon) 10. Remove "Ally" stickers from email signatures, offices, etc. 11. Don't email; talk directly 12. Questions; Please help me to coordinate any questions that you might ahve so that I can forward them up and get them answered. 13. Email copies of the information listed above (executive orders and HB)
October 18, 2025 at 4:18 AM
Reposted by Gary Needham
jacobengelberg.bsky.social
i'm very happy to share these endorsements for my forthcoming book, CINEMAS OF BISEXUAL TRANSGRESSION. it means the world to have such generous words from scholars i respect so deeply.
Half the background is a purply sheen. The other half features someone standing with another person's arm around their waist and an unclothed limb at the bottom. In the foreground of the lefthand side is the following text: "Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression revitalizes bisexuality screen scholarship by bringing critically deft, contextually rich, politically attuned evidence of its enduring indispensability and expanding urgency for queer media studies...Engelberg deepens our understandings of bisexuality's disruptive power and imaginative potential, while simultaneously staking out innovative theoretical-philosophical pathways and invaluable alliances with feminist, trans, and critical race studies." - Maria San Filippo, author of The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television The righthand side of the background is a purply sheen. The lefthand side is the face of Sharon Stone playing Catherine in the film Basic Instinct. To her left is the back of a blonde woman wearing a hooped earring. There is text on the righthand side of the image that reads: "Jacob Engelberg addresses an under-researched area in queer cinema studies with an impressive theoretical sophistication. His keen knowledge of film history and generous interventions in queer theory, film theory, and the bisexual film canon make this book the most comprehensive, considered, and thoughtful analysis of bisexuality in visual culture I have encountered. I'm frankly delighted by it." — Maria Pramaggiore, co-editor of Film: A Critical Introduction, 4th edition Towards the righthand side of the background is a person in a tank top manipulating something in their hands. In front of them is someone with their back turned. The lefthand side of the frame is a purply sheen. The text above it reads: "Jacob Engelberg lets the sexual body breathe.... Delivering new insights into the erotic life of mass culture, this book also reconceives bisexuality...as a tenacious sign of the unknowability of the bodies we crave and those we inhabit, on screen and off. This is a richly textured, subtle, and erudite engagement with the mass cultural archive, and a promising debut from an emerging critical voice, that resounds with a particular clarity and a rangy ambition." — Grace E. Lavery, author of Closures: Heterosexuality and the American Sitcom
September 9, 2025 at 3:33 PM
garyneedham.bsky.social
100% I would also add Clara Law to the "best of" too! I used to teach her Farewell China
shelleystamp.bsky.social Shelley Stamp @shelleystamp.bsky.social · Sep 4
I get it, but the way it’s pitched as “the best of HK cinema” is irksome.
September 4, 2025 at 3:05 PM
garyneedham.bsky.social
It seems to be a curation exclusively from the "Golden Princess Film Production" catalogue which I assume is why there's no Ann Hui. It is a pretty small roster of films from what I remember but includes those John Woo/Tsui Hark big hitters.
shelleystamp.bsky.social Shelley Stamp @shelleystamp.bsky.social · Sep 4
Great. But where’s Ann Hui?? Six-time Best Director at the HK Film Awards and *only* director whose work has won a Grand Slam (Best Picture/Director/Screenplay/Actor/Actress) — not once but twice. Lifetime Achievement Awards at Venice, Asian Film Awards and HK Fest.
criterionchannl.bsky.social Criterion Channel @criterionchannl.bsky.social · Sep 3
🚨🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨🚨Starting next month, make the Criterion Channel your home for the best in Hong Kong cinema! On October 1, a major selection of long-unavailable movies from the Golden Princess library will make their streaming debuts on the Channel
September 4, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Gary Needham
jacobengelberg.bsky.social
my chapter on one of the first instalments of the 80s bi video boom: BI-COASTAL (1985) is now available! featured in the wonderful SCREENING ADULT FILM, edited by ‪‪@ffreibert.bsky.social‬, Peter Alilunas, & Desirae Embree. ask your library to buy it! www.routledge.com/Screening-Ad...
a screen grab of a title image, presenting the title "Bi-Coastal" with an outline of the mainland US in an illustration behind it. this floats above a blurry cityscape a medium close up shot, two white men with dark hair look at each other while one blonde woman looks up at one of them the front cover of a book with the following text on it. "SCREENING CINEMA. SCREENING ADULT CINEMA. Edited by FARRAH FREIBERT, PETER ALILUNAS, and DESIRAE EMBREE." This text appears over a red background, and beside the editors names is the logo for the publisher Routledge. In the top half of the cover, a brown-skinned person with shaved sides of their head and a nose ring operates a camera. a screenshot of the first page of a chapter. It reads: 18. BI-COASTAL (1985). Jacob Engelberg. DOI: 10.4324/9781003276302-18. There is a fleeting moment in Linda Williams's influential article "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess" in which she references a rapidly proliferating pornographic subgenre. "There is a new category of video called bisexual," Williams announces, before detailing its definitional conventions: "Men do it with women, women do it with men, men do it with men and then all do it with one another, in the process breaking down a fundamental taboo against male-to-male sex." First published in 1991, Williams's article arrived six years after the explosion of a subgenre calling itself bisexual video. Whereas depictions of female bisexuality have been present in straight pornographic films since the earliest days of stag (and continue to this day), depictions of male bisexuality have been fewer. "Bisexual" would thus come to name an industrial category whose sine qua non was the depiction of men having sex with both women and men. This chapter considers one of the formative releases of the early bisexual video boom: Tom DeSimone's Bi-Coastal (1985). The video follows Jill (Cara Lott), who has traveled, bicoastally, from Chicago to Los Angeles to meet her boyfriend Nick (Tico Patterson).
August 31, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Gary Needham
hbowescatton.bsky.social
Are you neurodivergent & have done, or considered, a PhD? We’re researching how doctoral study works (or doesn’t) for neurodivergent people. Take our 30min survey & help make academia more inclusive forms.office.com/e/ft9jyWsPUW

Questions? Email lindsay.odell@open.ac.uk

#PhD #Neurodivergent
Three shelves of brightly coloured books
July 24, 2025 at 2:55 PM
garyneedham.bsky.social
The most scary and dystopian thing about Alien: Earth is that the only consumable media in the future appears to be Disney. In the first episode two scenes in which media content is watched in different geographies, locales is other Disney texts including Peter Pan and Pixar's Ice Age.
A scene from TV series #AlienEarth which a sick child looking up at an overhead screen showing a #Disney animation. A scene from TV series #AlienEarth which is in black and white and shows a a man watching a Disney Pixar animation on a screen.
August 14, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by Gary Needham
kristinwrites.bsky.social
Post from @caitgauthor.bsky.social on the ableism behind “write every day!”

I am definitely writing my book on crip time. Bc I must, there is no other way for me.

caitgordon.com/2022/09/16/t...
The Ableism and Privilege Behind “You Must Write Every Day”
You are the expert on yourself.  (This article first appeared in Write, the official magazine of the Writers’ Union of Canada, Summer 2022 edition.) One of my favourite things about being in a…
caitgordon.com
August 11, 2025 at 7:04 PM
Reposted by Gary Needham
jwlicinio.bsky.social
the UK’s Internet age verification law has led to the effective censorship of all LGBT content on Reddit

what a shocking and unexpected turn of events!
Post on /r/transgenderUK entitled “Reddit now censors LGBTQ+ content under OFCOM’s new ‘Online Safety Act’” post text: “I honestly can't even think of words to describe how vile this is. Here's a screenshot of what I now see when I search "lgbt" with my VPN switched off. Occasionally a banner appears at the top of the screen saying something about needing to verify ID to access "mature content" but the button doesn't even work. The fact that we're now considered "mature content" makes me feel sick.” The screenshot referenced in the previous image, showing the results of a search on Reddit for the term LGBT. No results from LGBT-specific subreddits appear; instead, posts from /r/Conservative, /r/Islam, /r/JustUnsubbed, etc are highlighted.
July 25, 2025 at 2:01 AM
garyneedham.bsky.social
New Queer Cinema apparently includes "Milk" and "Fox." I will hopefully be setting the record straight on the fiction of New Queer Cinema as "an irresponsible canon" (the chapter title) when the book on AIDS and independent cinema is actually finished. PS 'Without you I'm Nothing" is actually great!
an advert for the TCM network showing an image of Sandra Bernhard in the film Without You I'm Nothing I screen shot from a queer film festival showing Vito Russo's Parting Glances series on films from the eighties
July 5, 2025 at 9:11 AM
Reposted by Gary Needham
jennifervevans.bsky.social
Perhaps a good time to re up the New Fascism Syllabus, an online repository of resources on neofascism, populism, and authoritarianism, including a research repository and relevant secondary literature.

newfascismsyllabus.com
July 5, 2025 at 7:24 AM
garyneedham.bsky.social
related - I always remember Sarah Shulman's calling it the "New York Crimes" for its handling of the AIDS crisis
benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · Jul 4
Someone should write this book about their treatment of trans healthcare (if they haven't already). You could call it "Just Asking Questions."
ceaubin.com C. E. Aubin @ceaubin.com · Jul 4
Wondering what’s going on with the NYT and whether there are any historical precedents for their whole deal? Boy, have I got the book for you.
July 5, 2025 at 9:03 AM
Reposted by Gary Needham
benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social
"the designation “dip hop”... signals an independent style grounded in both hip-hop and Deaf culture. Like bounce, trap and drill, the label “dip hop” makes a greater distinction from being a variation of rap to a style that is heavily situated within Deaf culture and determined by Deaf aesthetics."
Deaf rappers who lay down rhymes in sign languages are changing what it means for music to be heard
Dip hop artists move across the stage, hands flying through the air, as audiences pulse to the rhythm of a blasting bass beat.
theconversation.com
July 1, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Gary Needham
betterthantoday.bsky.social
sensational
June 20, 2025 at 10:38 AM
garyneedham.bsky.social
👇excited to now be able to share my partner @jacobengelberg.bsky.social forthcoming book (January 2026) with @dukepress.bsky.social A much needed intervention that really does change how we think, theorise, and conceptualise cinema and bisexuality!
jacobengelberg.bsky.social Jacob Engelberg @jacobengelberg.bsky.social · Jun 17
delighted that i can now share the cover of my forthcoming monograph 𝘊𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. released 6 Jan 2026 with @dukepress.bsky.social in the Camera Obscura series.
June 17, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Gary Needham
waterslicer.bsky.social
For months, @wired.com has been working on something about this moment's big fights: pushback against immigration raids, Tesla Takedown, LGBTQ+ rights. When we started, we didn't expect to publish following some of the biggest protests of Trump’s second term.

www.wired.com/how-to-win-a...
How to Win a Fight
These days it feels like the next fight is always just around the corner. What matters is picking your battles—and knowing how to win.
www.wired.com
June 16, 2025 at 2:48 PM
garyneedham.bsky.social
I loved the original version but this Nitzer Ebb version and their additional remixes was elevated. The remixes on the Mute 12" are stunning. An indictment to streaming services as these gems haven't been heard since 1989.
June 12, 2025 at 7:31 AM
garyneedham.bsky.social
shout out to this one too @horrornonna.com which was a formative moment www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVy...
June 12, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Reposted by Gary Needham
shannonmattern.bsky.social
Great recs from @mattseybold.bsky.social on resisting technofeudal education: prioritize print, practice ungrading, "Luddify" the classroom; de-mobilize computer infrastructure (root technology in social place!); faculty governance over SaaS subscriptions; instructor choice re: ed-tech
Against Technofeudal Education
Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI
theamericanvandal.substack.com
June 10, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Gary Needham
suchmayer.bsky.social
Getting writing, queer dears: I want ur essays & poems in my eyes for catflap #5, Outburst Arts' awesome magazine.

Deadline: 30 June for finished poems & essays / 10 June for essay pitches, pls read FAQ carefully! Paid.

Pls share! Pls submit! No genAI! No str8s!

outburstarts.com/events-proje...
Cosmic-ish abstract image of rays or wool or something haloing a central hole or space, with the word catflap written in hot pink across the middle.
May 19, 2025 at 11:31 AM