Troy Michael Bordun is a contract instructor in Cinema Studies at Concordia University and Instructor III (Adjunct) in English and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia. Bordun’s work on contemporary cinema includes Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema: Film Theory at the Fringes of Contemporary Art Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), and recent articles and chapters in Cinephile, Mise-en-scène, Screening Scarlett Johansson: Gender, Genre, Stardom (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020), and ReFocus: The Films of Carlos Reygadas (Edinburgh, forthcoming). His work in porn studies can be found in Porn Studies, Celebrity Studies, and Synoptique. He is presently working on a book about philosophy and superhero comics. Bordun published some of this research in the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature.
Courses Taught at Concordia
Winter 2024
FMST 220 Film Analysis
FMST 336 Documentary Film of the Classical Period
Winter 2023
FMST 220 Film Analysis
FMST 205 Approaches to Film Studies
Fall 2022
SOCI 250 Sociology of Culture
Winter 2022
SOCI 250 Sociology of Culture
FMST 398 Noir without Borders
Fall 2019
ARTH 384 Theories of Representation
Summer 2019
ARTH 398 Art and Society
Fall 2018
COMS 425 Advanced Seminar in Cultural Studies
SOCI 475 Men and Masculinities
Winter 2018
COMS 415 Advanced Topics in the Photographic Image
Teaching Awards
2018 CUPE 3908-1 Award for Excellence in Teaching: Celebrity, Modernity, Culture, Sociology, Trent University, Fall 2017
Publications
In preparation
2025 Existentialism and Superhero Ethics (Lexington Books)
2023 “Sublime Aesthetics in Philippe Grandrieux’s Un lac,” Studies in European Cinema [under review]
2018 “Touching Films: Carlos Reygadas, Melodrama, and Haptic Visuality,” ReFocus: The Films of Carlos Reygadas, eds. Silvia Álvarez-Olarra and Amanda McMenamin, Edinburgh University Press [forthcoming]
Books
2017 Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema: Film Theory at the Fringes of Contemporary Art Cinema, Palgrave Macmillan
Book Chapters
2020 “On the off-screen voice: falling in love with Her,” Screening Scarlett Johansson: Gender, Genre and Celebrity, eds. Janice Loreck, Whitney Monaghan, and Kirsten Stevens, Palgrave Macmillan, 99-120
Articles
2023 “‘We Get to See the Genuine Personality ofour Favorite Stars’: Ariel Rebel, Performative Authenticity, and ParasocialInteraction,” Porn Studies, 1-8 [invited contribution, specialissue on porn performance]
2022 “The Woman’s Horror Film: Swallow and Promising Young Woman,” Cinephile 16.1: 26-33
2021 “Domino’s Philosophy of Luck,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 47.3: 337-355
2020 “Art, Porn, and Schlock: Fifty Shades of Grey and the Perplexed Film Critic,” Cinephile 14.1: 14-19
2019 “In Defence of Love: Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole and The Wayward Cloud,” Mise-en-scène 4.2: 24-35
2019 “‘We live in the past with Kari:’ Memory, Fandom, and Online Porn,” Celebrity Studies 12.1: 132-47
2018 “‘ONE DOLLAR GETS YOU IN!’: historical resonance and online solo girls circa 2005,” Porn Studies 5.3: 286-304
2016 “Death by Hanging Contra The Battle of Algiers by way of Rancière,” The Scattered Pelican 1.2: 5-20
2016 “Sex is Metaphysical: Catherine Breillat’s Pornographic Films,” Cine-Excess 2 [online]
2016 “On the Off-screen Voice: Sound and Vision in Spike Jonze’s Her,” CineAction 98: 57-64
2015 “Seeing Horror, Imagining the Horrible,” Off-screen 19.9 [online]
2015 “Onscreen and Off-screen Flesh and Blood: Performance, Affect, and Ethics in Catherine Breillat’s Films,” Studies in European Cinema 12.2: 132-43
Other publications
2022 “‘We Knew They Would Come for Us’: Danis Goulet’s Night Raiders (2021)” [critical film review], Off-screen 26.5 [online]
2018 “Bill and Betty and Olive: A 21st Century Melodrama” [Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, critical film review], Mise-en-scène 3.2: 46-52
2018 “An End of an Era? Michael Haneke’s Happy End” [critical film review], Off-screen 22.3 [online]
2016 “Porn in the Art Gallery: Collecting a Genre” [forum], Porn Studies 3.3: 317-319
2016 “What becomes of Endings on Film? Elysium, Mad Max: Fury Road, Snowpiercer” [symposium], Science Fiction Film and Television 9.1: 76-79
2015 “Where Have the Good Old Naughty Days Gone? Curating an Exhibition of Moving-Image Pornography” [exhibition report], Synoptique 4.1: 138-150
2015 “Abuse of Weakness” [critical film review], CineAction 96: 36-38
2013 “Georges Bataille, Philosopher of Laughter” [conference proceedings], Good Laugh, Bad Laugh, Ugly Laugh, My Laugh, 15th Annual Graduate Student Conference, Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies, Western University, March 1-3, http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/mllgradconference/2013Conference/
Book Reviews
2023 “Gendered Defenders: Marvel’s Heroines inTransmedia Spaces,” [by Bryan J. Carr and Meta G.Carstarphen, eds.], REDEN 4.2: 91-94 [co-authored with Prapti Sarkar]
2022 Book Review of Gender and Popular Culture by Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer, Studies in Popular Culture 44.1 [forthcoming]
2022 “Unpredictable Blockbusters” [invited book review, Science Fiction Film: Predicting the Impossible in the Age of Neoliberalism, by Eli Park Sorensen], Science Fiction Studies 49.3
2021 “Out of the Zone” [invited book review, Stalker, by Jon Hoel], Science Fiction Studies 48.3: 587-590
2021 “Reality Check” [invited book review, Utopia and Reality: Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds, eds. Simon Spiegel, Andrea Reiter, and Marcy Goldberg], Science Fiction Studies 48.1: 173-177
2019 “Hegemonic Masculinity is Back” [invited book review, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema: Cyborgs, Troopers and Other Men of the Future, by Marianne Kac-Vergne], Science Fiction Studies 46.3: 636-639
2019 “No Human Error” [invited book review, Understanding Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, ed. James Fenwick], Science Fiction Studies 46.2: 409-412
2018 “Revisiting Paul Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film,” Off-screen, Oct. 9 [online]
2018 “An Alternative to Haptic Cinema: Philippe Grandrieux: Sonic Cinema, by Greg Hainge,” Senses of Cinema 87 [online]
2017 “‘Whose place is this?’: The Architecture of David Lynch, by Richard Martin,” Senses of Cinema 84 [online]
2017 “The End of Extreme Cinema Studies” [invited review essay on Mattias Frey’s Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today’s Art Film Culture (2016) and Aaron Kerner and Jonathan Knapp’s Extreme Cinema: Affective Strategies in Transnational Media (2016)], Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 44.1: 122-136
2016 “Lost Souls: The Soul of Film Theory by Sarah Cooper,” Senses of Cinema 78 [online]
2016 “Film Programming: Curating for Theatres, Festivals, Archives [by Peter Bosma]” [web exclusive], Cineaste 41.2
2015 “Review: Douglas Keesey (2012) Contemporary Erotic Cinema,” Film-Philosophy 19: 105-07
2014 “Films for the Senses: Realism of the Senses in World Cinema: The Experience of Physical Reality, by Tiago de Luca,” Senses of Cinema 73 [online]
Filmmaker Interviews
2019 “Videophobia Confronts Consent in the Digital Age” [Daisuke Miyazaki], Slutever, October 24
2019 “A New Film’s Lynch-y Take on Youth, Sexuality, and Perversion” [Jennifer Reeder, Knives and Skin], Slutever, August 9
2018 “This Gay Erotic Thriller Takes Toxic Masculinity to Task” [Drew Lint, M/M], Slutever, November 7
2018 “Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber discuss their debut Cam (2018),” Off-screen, November 11 [online]
2018 “Two new women-led films explore desire and gender” [Yoko Yamanaka, Amiko; Jenn Wexler, The Ranger], Slutever, August 24 [online]
2018 “Fantasia Film Festival Coverage: Interview with cast and crew of The Ranger (2018),” Off-screen, July 25 [online]
2018 “This film about camming tears down the sex industry’s red tape” [Mazzei and Goldhaber, Cam], Slutever, July 22 [online]
2018 “5 Questions with Filmmaker and Pornographer Bruce LaBruce,” Slutever, June 26 [online]
2015 “Dylan Cree: Taking the serious comically,” Arthur Newspaper, October 7 [online and print]
Interviews
2021 “The Philosophy of Luck,” Daybreak North with Carolina de Ryk, CBC Radio North, January 25 [interview about “Domino’s Philosophy of Luck”]
Curatorial and Programming Work
2016 Organizer/Moderator, Small Gauge Revolution: A Programme of Vintage 8mm Adult Films, The Barbeside, Peterborough, ON, January 9, 2016 & March 11, 2016
2016 Organizer/Moderator, The Troy Bordun Visiting Canadian Filmmaker: Bruce LaBruce, Market Hall and Trent University, Peterborough, ON, February 25-26
2015 Curator, Dylan Cree Video Works, Trent University, September 30
2014 Curator, Stags, Sexploitation, and Hard Core: Moving-Image Pornography up to 1972, Trent Film Society, Artspace, August 28-30
2012 Curator, Things that Quicken the Heart: Cinema and (Non-)Narrativity, Trent Film Society, Artspace, August 22-24
2011-2014 Co-Director, Trent Film Society, Trent University
Grants
-
2023 Large Grants, ConcordiaUniversity, “‘We Get to See the Genuine Personality of our Favorite Stars’:Ariel Rebel, Performative Authenticity, and Parasocial Interaction,” Societyfor Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Denver, April 12-15, $3245
-
2022-2023 SSHRC Explore (UNBC), “Great Power, GreatResponsibility: Superhero Ethics and Continental Philosophy,” $7000
