Department of Communication Arts
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Clare O'Gara

Media and Cultural Studies

Teaching Assistant

any pronouns

 

cogara@wisc.edu

2151 Vilas Hall

Clare O'Gara

Clare studies what people make and do with and through digital technologies. Their work broadly explores how power contours the conditions and cultural objects by which human beings appear, fail to appear, and appear unevenly across and beyond cyberspace. Clare foregrounds a vision of media literacy that extends critical attention to texts, performances, embodiments, and subjectivities historically dismissed as frivolous and artless.

Additional Research Interests: micro-celebrity, social media entertainment, and the influencer industry; platform and interface studies; alternative internet histories; discourses of media quality and literacy; queer and trans identity, theory, and culture; sports and fitness media.

clareogara.com

Education

  • M.A. — University of Wisconsin – Madison, 2024 — Communication Arts, Media and Cultural Studies
  • B.A. — Smith College, 2022 — English, Film and Media Studies, Poetry
    • Honors Thesis: “Camera-Penned, User-Generated: Searching for Self in YouTube Video Essays”

Teaching Appointments

Teaching Assistant:

  • GWS101 Gender, Women, and Cultural Representation, Spring 2026
  • CA250 Survey of Contemporary Media, 2024-2025
  • CA359 Sports Media, Spring 2024
  • CA100 Introduction to Speech Composition, Fall 2023
  • CA155 Introduction to Digital Media Production, 2022-2023

Grader:

  • LIS461 Data and Algorithms: Ethics and Policy, Summer 2025
  • CA359 Sports Media, Fall 2023

Consultant:

  • DesignLab, Fall 2025

Publications

  • 2024, September 1. “’This Is Not a Performance’: Coming-Out Videos, LGBTQ+ Microcelebrity, and the Tenuous Rise of New Queer YouTube.” Camera Obscura 39(116): 189–218. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-11207867
  • 2024, Spring. “Snackable, Spreadable, User-Generated Spectacles: Theorizing a ‘Dream Marriage’ Between Sports and Digital Media.” Journal of Sports Media 19(1): 1-25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jsm.2024.a970124

Service