Office Hours

M 9am-12pm

Get to Know Cam

Cameron Lynn Brown (he/him/his) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. As a media studies scholar, his research focuses on the relationship between fans/audiences, queerness, and emotional labor. His article, “Residual Fandom: Media Industries, Technologies, and Fans of Survivor” is published in The Velvet Light Trap. Specifically, his research examines the way audiences understand the relationship between queerness and queer labor practices—like emotional labor—within the context of reality television and social media. Cameron contributes to scholarly conversations on queer and feminist media and popular culture. Currently, Cameron is working on his dissertation which aims to expand the definition of reality television to include other forms of media production like short-form social media content to further explore the relationship between media production, industries, and reception. This project seeks to interrogate how queer (emotional) labor holds cultural capital for queer people and to explore the variety of ways they are called on to perform it.

Education

• PhD, University of Iowa, Media Studies, 2019
  • Present (Projected Graduation: May 2023)
  • Department of Communication Studies
  • Concentrations in Cultural Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies
  • Dissertation: You Got Me Feeling Emotions: Audiences, Reality Genres, and Emotional Labor
  • Committee: Alfred L. Martin, Jr. (Chair), Kembrew McLeod, Andrew Owens, Meenakshi Durham, Sarah Banet-Weiser (USC-/University of Pennsylvania-Annenberg) 
• MA, The University of Memphis,  Communication Studies, 2019
  • Thesis: “My job is to live my life, not save yours”: The Ordinariness and Emotional Labor of Queer Masculinity in Netflix’s Queer Eye  
  • Amanda Nell Edgar, Thesis Chair 
• BA, The University of Memphis, Communication Studies & Foreign Language: Spanish , 2016