# Nick Salvato

**Source**: https://americanstudies.cornell.edu/nick-salvato
**Parent**: https://americanstudies.cornell.edu/faculty

## Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Liberal Studies

### Overview

**Nick Salvato is the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Liberal Studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts. He teaches and writes about media and performance practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with an increasing emphasis on late-twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century television. His numerous articles have appeared in such journals as** ***Camera Obscura*****,** ***Critical Inquiry*****,** ***Discourse*****,** ***Modern Drama*****,** ***Qui Parle*****, and** ***TDR: The Drama Review*****. His two most recent books are** ***Obstruction*** **(Duke University Press, 2016), which examines the surprising uses of embarrassment, laziness, slowness, cynicism, and digressiveness in intellectual life, and** ***Television Scales*** **(punctum books, 2019), a formally experimental work that argues for the necessary centrality of the concept of scale in understanding television as a medium. He is currently working on a monograph with the tentative title, "Wallowing: On the Uses of Typical Television."**

### Research Focus

Nick Salvato's work combines close formal analysis, archival research, autoethnography, and an abiding commitment to feminist and queer forms of inquiry. The objects of his attention range from television, cinema, and the internet to drama, theater, and performance.

### Publications

**Academic articles:**

- Deformation; or, Catachresis and *Silk Stalkings*. *Qui Parle*, 2025
- Cuteness Envy. *Critical Inquiry*,2025
- Insensitivity Training. *Television & New Media*, 2024
- Queer Structure, Animated Form, and *Really Rosie*. *Camera Obscura*, 2018
- Big Glove: Televisual Dissociation and Embodied Performance. *Criticism*, 2015
- Feeling So Unusual: Cyndi Lauper and Queer Affect. *Mosaic*, 2015
- Cringe Criticism: On Embarrassment and Tori Amos. *Critical Inquiry*, 2013
- Fag Hag: A Theory of Effeminate Enthusiasms. *Discourse*, 2013
- The New Old Rush: Berlin's *Bonanza*. *Theater*, 2012
- A Horse's Husband: David Greenspan's Queer Temporalities and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage. *Theatre Survey*, 2011
- "Ta daaaa": Presenting Pig Iron Theatre Company. *The Drama Review*, 2010
- Editorial Comment: The Age of Gossipdom. *Modern Drama*, 2010
- Prosthetic Intimacies: Television, Performance Studies, and the Makings of (a) Life. *Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism*, 2010
- Out of Hand: YouTube Amateurs and Professionals. *TDR: The Drama Review*, 2009
- On the Bubble: The Soap Opera Diva's Ambivalent Orbit. *Camera Obscura*, 2007
- Uncloseting Drama: Gertrude Stein and the Wooster Group. *Modern Drama*, 2007
- Tramp Sensibility and the Afterlife of *Showgirls*. *Theater*, 2006
- Louis Zukofsky's Old English Sources for *“A”‐23.* *Notes and Queries*, 2002

**Book Chapters:**

- In the Queer-View Mirror: Looking at 1991. In *Television Studies in Queer Times*. Routledge, 2023
- Djuna Barnes. In *Routledge Anthology of Women's Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism*. Routledge, 2023
- David Greenspan. In *50 Key Figures in Queer U.S. Theatre*. Routledge, 2022
- Camp Performance and the Case of *Discotropic*. In *After Queer Studies: Literary Theory and Literary Interpretation*. Cambridge University Press, 2019
- Closet Television, Queer *Hooperman*. In *Closet Drama: History, Theory, Genre*. Routledge, 2018

**Books:**

- *Television Scales*. punctum books, 2019
- *Obstruction*. Duke University Press, 2016
- *Knots Landing*. Wayne State University Press, 2015
- *Uncloseting Drama: American Modernism and Queer Performance.*Yale University Press, 2010

## In the news

- [J. Ellen Gainor wins book award from Theatre Library Association](/news/j-ellen-gainor-wins-book-award-theatre-library-association)

## Courses - Fall 2025

- [AMST 2160 : Television](https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA25/class/AMST/2160)