Dr. Nikola Stepic

Dr. Nikola Stepić is an FRQSC postdoctoral fellow at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. His research links queer film history and studies of the cinematic city, and focuses on autoeroticism as a form of media consumption that has demarcated the boundaries between public and private spheres.

Nikola received his PhD in Humanities from Concordia University, where he was also named a Concordia Public Scholar. An award-winning scholar in the fields of cinema and sexuality, he has received the Gerald Pratley Award from the Film Studies Association of Canada for "innovative research in cinema and media studies that will contribute to the understanding of cinema and media produced in Canada/Queébec" for his work on early Québécois gay hardcore as media that indexed the mainstreaming of gay infrastructure and entrepreneurial initiatives in Montreal in the 1990s, as well as the inaugural Early Career Scholar Best Paper Award by the SCMS Adult Film History Special Interest Group for his paper on the filmic mediations of San Francisco in hardcore films by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.

Nikola has published and presented widely on his interests in sexuality studies, porn studies, and queer cinema and material culture. His work can be read in Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, The European Journal of American Studies, Porn Studies and other journals. In 2021, Nikola co-edited a special issue of Synoptique, on "Porn and Its Uses."

Undergraduate Courses Taught

FMST 391 / FFAR 298 / COMS 304: Sexual Representation in Cinema

FMST 393: Queer Cinema II

Guest Lectures

"Stag Films." COMS 415/542: Advanced Topics in the Photographic Image: A Little History of Nude Photography, Concordia University. February 12, 2018.

"Chosen Family as Survival Strategy." FFAR290: HIV/AIDS: Cultural, Social and Scientific Aspects of the Pandemic, Concordia University. November 17, 2016.

Journal Articles

"Objects of Desire: Masculinity, Homosociality and Foppishness in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and About a Boy." Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 23.1 (2018): 144-155.

"Spectacles of Shame: Ryan Murphy as Curator of Queer Cultural Memory." Zbornik radova Univerziteta u Prištini [Collection of Papers of the Faculty of Philosophy]. 47.3 (2017): 71-86.

"AIDS, Caregiving and Kinship: The Queer "Family" in Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances."European Journal of American Studies 11.3 (2016). Web.

"The Reproduction of Saint Sebastian as a Queer Martyr in Suddenly, Last Summer and Lilies." The Journal of Religion and Culture 26.2 (2016): 120-34.

Chapters in Anthologies

"From Dynasty to Voguing: Tracing the Queer Family in Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning (1990)." In Žanrovska ukrštanja srpske i anglofone književnosti: prevodna recepcija i književnoteorijska intepretacija [Genre Crossings in Serbian and Anglophone Literature: Translative Reception and Literary Interpretation], edited by Vladislava Gordić Petković and Zoran Paunović, 147-163. Novi Sad: Faculty of Philosophy, 2017.

"Representations of the Marginalized: In Search of an Identity in the Poetry of Tara Hardy, Adrienne Rich, and Tim'm West." In Discourses That Matter: Selected Essays on English and American Studies, edited by Maria José Canelo, 177-190. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Co-authored with Ana Rockov.

Conference Presentations

"Québec Exposed: Gay Male Pornography as Virtual Tourism." Presented at Society for Cinema and Media Studies in Toronto, Canada. March 2018.

"Shame, Trauma, and Disco Queens: Ryan Murphy’s Uncanny Imagery." Presented at Theorising the Popular Conference at Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, England. June 2016.

"Saint Sebastian as Stand-In for Desire, Identity and Performativity in Suddenly, Last Summer and Lilies." Presented at Film Studies Association of Canada conference in Ottawa, Canada. June 2015.

"Looking Back on the News: Conceptualizing Television in HBO's The Newsroom." Presented at Media Mutations Conference at University of Bologna, Italy. May 2014.

"Representations of the Marginalized: In Search of an Identity in the Poetry of Tara Hardy, Adrienne Rich and Tim'm West." Presented at the Discourses that Matter: Contemporary Approaches to English and American Studies conference at University of Coimbra, Portugal. November 2012.

Conference and Symposia Activity

Session Chair: Agents of Design / Design as Agency Symposium. Concordia University, March 2018.

"Navigating the Queer City." Concordia Graduate Film Studies Student Association MA Symposium. March 2015.

Grad School Is Good for You, Concordia University Open House Panel. November 2014.

"Empire State of Mind: Sex and the City and Cultural Imperialism." Concordia Graduate Film Studies Student Association MA Symposium. January 2014.