Leah Steuer

Office Hours:

• Thursday 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Expertise and Activities

Leah Steuer is a PhD candidate in Media & Cultural Studies. She focuses on the body’s role in media reception, exploring how TV audiences engage with sensation, touch, and emotion during everyday viewing. She is interested in affective approaches to spectatorship, accessibility, reception, fandom, and sound. Recent projects include:

• Vision-impaired audiences: audio description and affective access
• Food re-creation as fannish consumption
• ASMR culture on YouTube
• Television re-watching and emotional regulation

She is the editor-in-chief of Playback and has served as the editorial assistant for the International Journal of Cultural Studies.

Courses

• CA 250: Survey of Contemporary Media
• CA 351: Television Industries
• CA 451: Television Criticism

Honors/Awards

• Peer Mentor Award, 2020 (Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Funding)
• Sharon Sites Award, 2018 (Department of Communication Arts)

Articles

• “Structural Affects of Soap Opera Fan Correspondence, 1970s–80s.” Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol. 30, 2019, doi:10.3983/twc.2019.1735.

Blogs and Other Publications

• OTW Guest Post, Transformative Works and Cultures, May 2020.
• “Feeling Forms: ASMR Roleplays as Receptive Media Practice (video essay),” Playback, October 2019.
• “DANGEROUS GAME,” Cinematheque, April 2019.
• “Spooky Pedagogy,” Playback, October 2018.
• TINGLES!: New Potentials for Studying the Embodied Audience,” Playback, September 2018.
• THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS,” Cinematheque, September 2018.
• “Visions of Female Nudity on and Beyond ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’,” Playback, March 2018.

Service

• Peabody Awards Screening Committee, 2019 & 2020
• Graduate Student Organization area rep, 2019-2020

Education

• M.A. Cinema & Media Studies, UCLA, 2017
• B.A. Pomona College, 2011