Thomas Waugh is a Canadian critic, lecturer, author, actor, and activist, best known for his extensive work on documentary film and eroticism in the history of

LGBT LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...

cinema and art. A professor emeritus at

Concordia University Concordia University () is a Public university, public English-language research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College (Montreal), Loyola College and Sir George Williams Universit ...

, he taught 41 years in the

film studies Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various film theory, theoretical, history of film, historical, and film criticism, critical approaches to film, cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media stud ...

program of the School of Cinema and held a research chair in documentary film and sexual representation. He was also the director of the Concordia HIV/AIDS Project, 1993-2017, a program providing a platform for research and conversations involving HIV/AIDS in the Montréal area.

Career

A graduate of

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, Waugh wrote film criticism and history articles for publications such as ''

Jump Cut A jump cut is a cut (transition), cut in film editing that breaks a single continuous sequential shot of a subject into two parts, with a piece of footage removed to create the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera positioning on the subjec ...

'' and '' The Body Politic'' before publishing his first book, ''Show Us Life: Towards a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary'', in 1984. His 1996 book, ''Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall'', took 13 years to research and write. Its release was delayed eight full months after its initial planned publication date, due to difficulty finding a printer willing to handle the book's sexually explicit

homoerotic Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, including both male–male and female–female attraction. The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be tempor ...

imagery. He is a two-time

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary Foundation, Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ+ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ+ literatur ...

nominee, garnering nominations in the Visual Arts category at the 15th Lambda Literary Awards in 2003 for ''Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics From Before Stonewall'', and at the 17th Lambda Literary Awards in 2005 for ''Lust Unearthed: Vintage Gay Graphics from the DuBek Collection''. He is also the recipient of the SCMS (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award for ''The Conscience of Cinema: The Work of Joris Ivens, 1912-1989''. Waugh has also served on the board of Cinema Politica, has been active with the Quebec Gay Archives, and is coeditor with

Matthew Hays Matthew Hays is a Canadian film critic, writer, film festival programmer and academic. He won a Lambda Literary Award for his 2007 book '' The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers''. Hays teaches film studies, journalism ...

of the ''Queer Film Classics'' series of 19 monographs on LGBT film, published by Arsenal Pulp Press. In 2013 Waugh, Ryan Conrad and Cinema Politica raised funds on

Indiegogo Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows peo ...

to produce and distribute a documentary film about the Russian LGBT organization Children-404. In 2010, Waugh and filmmaker Kim Simard launched the Queer Media Database Canada-Québec, an online database project to collect and publish information about LGBT films and videos made in Canada and the personalities involved in their creation."Online database of queer Canadian movies launching at Toronto Pride"
''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...

'', June 24, 2015. The project was based in part on his 2006 book ''The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas''.

Works

*''Who Are We?, A Very Natural Thing, The Naked Civil Servant: Films By Gays For Gays'' (1977) *''Show Us Life: Towards a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary'' (1984) *''Men's Pornography: Gay vs. Straight'' (1985) *''Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall'' (1996) *''The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema'' (2000) *''Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics From Before Stonewall'' (2002) *''Lust Unearthed: Vintage Gay Graphics from the DuBek Collection'' (2004) *''The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas'' (2006) *''Gay Art: A Historic Collection'' (2006) *''Comin' At Ya! The Homoerotic 3-D Photographs of Denny Denfield'' (2007, with David L. Chapman) *''Montreal Main'' (2010, with Jason Garrison) *'' Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; ) is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and altern ...

'' (2010, with Michael Baker and Ezra Winton) *''The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film'' (2011) *''The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of

John Greyson John Greyson (born March 13, 1960) is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and Activism, political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely affiliated group of filmmakers to ...

'' (2013, with Brenda Longfellow and Scott MacKenzie) *''The Conscience of Cinema: The Works of

Joris Ivens Georg Henri Anton "Joris" Ivens (18 November 1898 – 28 June 1989) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker. Among the notable films he directed or co-directed are '' A Tale of the Wind'', ''The Spanish Earth'', ''Rain'', ''...A Valparaiso'', '' Misèr ...

, 1912-1989'' (2016) *''I Confess! Constructing the Sexual Self In the Internet Age'' (2019, edited with Brandon Arroyo)

References

External links

Thomas Waugh
faculty biography at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Waugh, Thomas 1948 births Living people Canadian art historians Canadian film critics Canadian film historians Canadian male non-fiction writers Columbia University alumni Academic staff of Concordia University Canadian gay writers Historians of LGBTQ topics Writers from London, Ontario 20th-century Canadian LGBTQ people 21st-century Canadian LGBTQ people