Dr. Harry Benshoff

UNT Faculty Profile

Department of Media Arts

Dr. Benshoff is known primarily for his work on queer sexualities and the horror film, as well as more broad topics within horror studies and LGBTQ+ film studies. He is the author of Monsters in the Closet: Homosexualitiy and the Horror Film (Manchester University Press, 1997), Dark Shadows (Wayne State University Press, 2011), and editor of A Companion to the Horror Film (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). He has two books on LGBTQ+ film history and theory: Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America (co-written with Sean Griffin for Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), and Queer Cinema: The Film Reader (co-edited with Sean Griffin for Routledge, 2004). He is also the author of one textbook: Film and Television Analysis: An Introduction to Theory, Methods, and Approaches (Routledge, 2015), and co-author of another: America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in the Movies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2021 [2009, 2004]). Benshoff's numerous other essays and book chapters explore topics such as blaxploitation horror films, Hollywood LSD films, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Milk (2008), Twilight (2008), and straight-to-video gay niche horror. Selections from Monsters in the Closet continue to be reprinted in recent anthologies dedicated to theoretical approaches to the horror film.

For the Women & Gender Studies Program, Dr. Benshoff teaches "Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Film and Video" and "Gender and Sexuality in the Horror Film." Both classes are 4000/5000 level "meets with" classes open to both undergraduates and graduate students.

For any questions, email benshoff@unt.edu