Dr. Troy Michael Bordun, Enligh and Gender Studies, University of Northern British Columbia

Biography

Research specializations and interests:contemporary superhero comics, contemporary art cinema, sexuality in cinema and media, film genres, contemporary sf cinema, fantastic literature, film theory,continental philosophy, gender and cultural studies, celebrity studies

Dr. Troy Michael Bordun completed hisdoctoral degree in Cultural Studies at Trent University. Bordun’s publications in film studies include Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema: Film Theory at the Fringes of Contemporary Art Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan,2017), recent articles in Studies in European Cinema, Offscreen, Mise-en-scène, and Cinephile, and a chapter in Screening Scarlett Johansson: Gender, Genre, Stardom (PalgraveMacMillan, 2020). He has published articles on sf cinema in Science Fiction Film and Television and CineAction, and published book reviews onthe topic in Science Fiction Studies. His articles in porn studies canbe found in Synoptique, Porn Studies, and Celebrity Studies.And Bordun’s articles and reviews in comics studies have appeared in the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature and REDEN. In 2021, he received a SSHRC Explore Grant, and in 2023 a Research Strategic Initiatives Grant (UNBC), to study superhero comics and philosophy. He is a Co-Chair of the Comics Studies SIG, Society of Cinema and Media Studies.

Courses Taught at Concordia

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: Blood on the Battlefield [ongoing book project under contract with Lexington Books]

2023    Invited book review, Feminist Posthumanism in Contemporary Science Fiction Film and Media: From Annihilation to High Life and Beyond, Julia A. Empey and Russell J. A. Kilbourn, eds., Science Fiction Studies [submitted]

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 in2024]

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    “Submitting to Love Authority: Wonder Woman’s DeleuzoGuattarianEthics,” REDEN 5.1: 24-43

2023    “Sublime Aesthetics in Philippe Grandrieux’s Un lac,” Studies in European Cinema, 1-16

2023    “‘The Genuine Personality of our Favorite Stars’: Ariel Rebel, Performative Authenticity, and Parasocial Interaction,” PornStudies, 1-8 [invited contribution, special issue 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: A Bataillean Reading,” 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 sologirls circa 2005,” Porn Studies 5.3: 286-304

2016    “Death by Hanging Contra The Battle of Algiers byway of Rancière,” The Scattered Pelican 1.2: 5-20

2016    “Sex is Metaphysical: Catherine Breillat’s Pornographic Films,” Cine-Excess2 [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,” Offscreen 19.9[online]

2015    “Onscreen and Off-screen Flesh and Blood: Performance, Affect,and Ethics in Catherine Breillat’s Films,” Studies in European Cinema12.2: 132-43

Other publications

2022    “‘We Knew They Would Come for Us’: Danis Goulet’s Night Raiders (2021)” [critical film review], Offscreen 26.5 [online]

2018    “Bill and Betty and Olive: A 21^st Century Melodrama” [Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, critical film review], Mise-en-scène3.2: 46-52

2018    “An End of an Era? Michael Haneke’s Happy End” [critical film review], Offscreen 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], Synoptique4.1: 138-150

2015    “Abuse of Weakness” [critical film review], CineAction96: 36-38

2013    “Georges Bataille, Philosopher of Laughter” [conference proceedings], Good Laugh, Bad Laugh, Ugly Laugh, My Laugh, 15^th Annual Graduate Student Conference, Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies, Western University,March 1-3, http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/mllgradconference/2013Conference/[withdrawn]

Book Reviews

2024    “New Slants and New SF Cinemas” [invited book review, The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas, J. P. Telotte, ed.], Science Fiction Studies51.1: 126-130

2024    “Ethics in End Times” [Destruction,Ethics, and Intergalactic Love: Y: The Last Man and Saga, by Peter Admirand], Science Fiction Studies 51.1: 95-98

2023    “Gendered Defenders: Marvel’s Heroines in Transmedia Spaces” [Bryan J. Carr and Meta G. Carstarphen, eds.], REDEN 4.2: 91-94 [co-authored with Prapti Sarkar]

2022    “Gender and Popular Culture, by Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer,” Studies in Popular Culture 44.1: 130-132

2022    “Unpredictable Blockbusters” [invited book review, Science Fiction Film: Predicting the Impossible in the Age of Neoliberalism, by Eli Park Sorensen], Science Fiction Studies 49.3:591-595

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, Simon Spiegel, Andrea Reiter, and Marcy Goldberg, eds.], 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, James Fenwick, ed.], Science Fiction Studies 46.2: 409-412

2018    “Revisiting Paul Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film,” Offscreen 23.8 [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], Cineaste 41.2 [web exclusive]

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 Cinema73 [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),” Offscreen, 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),” Offscreen,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

2023-2024       Research Strategic Initiative Grants, University of Northern British Columbia, “Existentialism and Superhero Ethics: Blood on the Battlefield,” $5750

2023                Large Grants, Concordia University, “‘The Genuine Personality of our Favorite Stars’: Ariel Rebel, Performative Authenticity, and Parasocial Interaction,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Denver, April 12-15, $3245

2022-2023       SSHRC Explore (UNBC), “Great Power, Great Responsibility: Superhero Ethics and Continental Philosophy,” $7000