Nikola Stepić, Concordia Public Scholar and PhD Student in Humanities, has been featured on the Porno Cultures Podcast.
Conceived by a fellow porn researcher and PhD candidate at Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Brandon Arroyo, Porno Cultures is a monthly podcast featuring interviews with academics and cultural influencers who help us think about pornography and sexuality in new and interesting ways.
The episode, titled “Canadian Content: The Adult Film Industry & its Canadian Contexts,” focuses on four papers that were delivered at the latest Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Toronto, Ontario, this past March. Nikola discusses his research on pornography as virtual tourism and, more specifically, how pre-digital Montreal-based gay pornographic films created and promoted a Québécois gay aesthetic and cosmopolitanism through direct reference to Montreal’s gay culture and institutions.
Elsewhere in the episode, Dr. Peter Alilunas (University of Oregon) discusses the pornographic history of Toronto’s famous Yonge Street. Dr. Cait McKinney (California State University at Northridge) recovers a long-lost 1984 film, titled Slumber Party, made by a group of radical feminist lesbians. Finally, Dr. Patrick Keilty (University of Toronto) historicizes Montreal’s status as the porn capital of the world and the digital interfaces of online platforms.