ROUNDTABLE: SCREENING SEX IN THE CLASSROOM – PEDAGOGICAL REFLECTIONS

TUESDAY 21ST OCTOBER 2025 / 6-7PM UK TIME

We are pleased to share details about our next event in the Screening Sex seminar series. Registration is now open for the October seminar and you can request a notification when registration opens for the subsequent events.

This international, cross-institutional roundtable and forum will explore pedagogical practices and challenges relating to teaching sex on screen in Higher Education. The event will feature a conversation between Professor Karen Boyle, Dr John Paul Stadler, Éric Falardeau and Polina Zelmanova that will reflect on the scholars’ various approaches to teaching and screening sex on screen, in combination with navigating national, institutional, and ethical issues. The discussion will be followed by an open forum with event participants to collaboratively explore and reflect on these issues and questions further. The event will facilitate a space for exchanging perspectives and concerns, as well as ideas and resources.

SPEAKER BIOS

Karen Boyle is Professor of Feminist Media Studies and Head of the Department of Humanities at the University of Strathclyde. She was PI on the BA/Leverhulme Project on the use of trigger warnings in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in UK HE (with Melanie McCarry and Melody House) with publications from that project in the Journal of Gender-Based Violence and forthcoming in Feminist Theory. Karen is the author of #MeToo & Feminism: Weinstein and Beyond (2024) and co-editor (with Susan Berridge) of Routledge Companion to Gender, Media & Violence and the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Gender, Violence & Popular Culture (2026).

Dr John Paul Stadler is an assistant professor of Film and Media Studies at North Carolina State University, with cross-appointments in the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media program and the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program. His research and teaching centers on the role of media in shaping modern notions of gender and sexuality. His research has covered the complex desire structure of gay-for-pay pornography, the rise of phone sex during the AIDS epidemic, the relationship of porn studies as a discursive field to queer studies, and the epidemiological lessons of the porn industry for the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently, he is writing on the modern fetish of gooning, the gamification of porn in “Cock Hero” videos, and the psychogeography of space in the first AIDS film, Buddies.

Éric Falardeau is a doctoral candidate in Communication Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His dissertation, currently under review, analyzes representations of the male body in online pornographic audiovisual productions. His ongoing research focuses on the history of pornographic cinema in Quebec. Falardeau is also an accomplished filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist. His first feature film, Thanatomorphose (2012), received fifteen awards at international festivals and has been distributed in more than a dozen countries. In 2019, he directed the pornographic horror film The Thing from the Lake (Adult Time).

Polina Zelmanova is a doctoral candidate in Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Their thesis explores sex in contemporary film and television in the #MeToo era. Polina is part of the Screening Sex working group and has previously published work in Porn Studies and is a co-editor of an upcoming special issue titled ‘Sex and Contemporary Media’. Outside of academia, they also work as a relationships and sex education facilitator in the charity sector, where they also support with program development.

Register for “Roundtable: Screening Sex in the Classroom” by completing the form below and a Teams link will be emailed to you 24-hours before the event. Attendee questions can be submitted in advance by emailing screeningsex@gmail.com.

To register :
https://screeningsex.com/2025/10/06/roundtable-screening-sex-in-the-classroom-pedagogical-reflections-25-26-seminar-series/