Erin was appointed Lecturer in Film & Television Studies at the University of Glasgow in 2024. She worked previously at the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University as a sessional instructor. She holds a PhD in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto.

My research presents a dual intervention into queer and film theories. I argue that queer frameworks can be used to explore sites of “undersexualization,” wherein subjects are socially or legally barred from normative sex and coupled intimacy. I use these gaps to not only challenge which forms of eroticism “count” as sex, but also to reconsider the function of film aesthetics in establishing proximity between viewers and images. In particular, my research questions the notion that cinema is a tool for providing immersion, reciprocity, or identification, and instead argues that the medium’s eroticism is predicated on spectatorial distance and unrequited longing. 

In my current research, I ask what it might mean to understand sexual frigidity as a site for queer film theoretical inquiry. This project argues that “the frigid woman” continues to define permissible parameters for feminine sexual expression, and therefore can be placed in conversation with the medicalization of queerness. The films I will address as part of this project are united by a consideration of women’s sexual desire as a problem not because it is excessive, but because it is detached, cold, or unreadable. Whereas film studies has traditionally framed the problem of female desire through hysteria, this project uses frigidity to re-examine the legibility of feminized eroticism, questioning its equation with abundant emotion or audiovisual immediacy. In contrast, I argue that frigid aesthetics purposefully place the spectator at a remove, challenging both these gendered terms of representation and the notion that cinema should seek to empathetically enmesh viewer and film.

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Prior publications

Aesthetics of Coldness: Frigid Femininity and Film Form

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2024-26, declined. 

Unconsummated/Queer Loneliness

Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Government of Ontario and University of Toronto), 2021-22

Unconsummated/Queer Loneliness

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship, 2020-21

I welcome PhD applications in the following areas:

• Queer cinema
• Queer film theory
• Feminist film theory
• Representations of gender and sexuality
• Asian American studies

• Gelbelman, Eugina A
  A Woman Voyeur: Interrogating the Female Auteur and Spectator

• Feminist Film Theory (Honours)

Prizes, awards & distinctions

• 2023: Student Writing Award, Second Place (Society for Cinema and Media Studies)
• 2022: Award for Distinction in Graduate Student Teaching (Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto)
• 2022: Graduate Student Award (Asian/Pacific American Caucus, Society for Cinema and Media Studies)
• 2021: Doctoral Completion Award (Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto)
• 2020: Doctoral Completion Award (Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto)

Research fellowships

• 2021 - 2022: Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Government of Ontario and University of Toronto)
• 2020 - 2021: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Awared
• 2016 - 2020: Faculty of Arts and Sciences Top Doctoral Fellowship, University of Toronto

Selected international presentations

• 2023: Film and Media Society of Canada Annual Conference (York University)
• 2023: Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference (Denver, Colorado)
• 2022: The Life’s Work of Obayashi Nobuhiko (Yale University)
• 2022: Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference (Virtual)
• 2021: Film Studies Association of Canada Annual Conference (Virtual)
• 2021: Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference (Virtual)
• 2019: World Picture Conference (University of Toronto)
• 2019: Film Studies Association of Canada Annual Conference (University of British Columbia)
• 2019: Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference (Seattle, Washington)
• 2018: Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference (Toronto, Ontario)