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Sabrina Moro imageBA (McGill), MA (EHESS), PhD (Nottingham Trent University)
Lecturer

Contact

Office: 3N8, 3rd Floor, Arts (Burns)
Tel +64 3 556 5135
Email sabrina.moro@otago.ac.nz

Research interests

Sexual violence; feminism; popular culture; celebrity culture; cancel culture; research methods.

Sabrina is a feminist researcher whose teaching and research interrogates the fraught visibility of sexual violence and feminism in contemporary popular culture. She is particularly interested in the ways in which postfeminism and neoliberal feminism accommodate feminist discourses and practices, but ultimately fuel inequalities and enable an antifeminist backlash. Her research explores the intersection of gender, race, class, sexuality, and the commodification of affect and activism under neoliberal capitalism more broadly.

She is currently working on a monograph, Spectacular Rape: The Celebritisation of Sexual Violence, which draws from her PhD thesis and focuses on the ways in which celebrity culture shapes media representations of sexual violence in contemporary US media.

She is also developing a new research project provisionally entitled Cancel Culture and the Remediation of Fame, which attends to the ways in which discourses about cancel culture capture anxieties related to gender, class, race, and sexuality in a fast-paced mediascape.

Her research is deeply interdisciplinary and sits at the crossroads of celebrity studies, cultural studies, and feminist theory. She has developed a keen interest in research methods and the politics of knowledge production, which stems from her previous degrees in anthropology, sociology, and gender studies, and her experience navigating anglophone and francophone academia. She cultivates these connections through research collaborations with colleagues in the UK, France, and Canada.

Supervision

Sabrina welcomes honours, masters', and PhD projects in the areas of:

  • Intersectional approaches to the study of media and consumer culture
  • Feminism and popular culture
  • Celebrity culture
  • Cancel culture
  • Digital activism
  • Politics of knowledge production

Teaching

Publications

Moro, S. (2023). Meta #MeToo dramas: Spectacular depictions of workplace sexual harassment in contemporary film and TV series. Proceedings of the Australian & New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) Conference: Ka mua, ka muri: Bridging communication pasts and futures. (pp. 93-94). Retrieved from https://www.anzca2023.com

Moro, S., Overell, R. & Nicholls, B. (2023, August). Barbie: Possibilities and impasses. Pop up discussion hosted by the Media, Film and Communications Programme, University of Otago, New Zealand. [Public Discussion].

Moro, S., Sapio, G., Buisson, C., Trovato, N., & Duchamp, Z. (2023). To be Heard through the #MeToo backlash. Soundings, 83, 90-101. doi: 10.3898/SOUN.83.06.2023

Moro, S. (2022). [Review of the book Digital feminist activism: Girls and women fight back against rape culture]. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25(5), 1540-1543. doi: 10.1177/13675494221117290

Moro, S. (2022). Before #MeToo: Maria Schneider and the cultural politics of victimhood. In L. Funnell & R. Beliveau (Eds.), Screening #MeToo: Rape culture in Hollywood. (pp. 29-46). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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