Peter Alilunas


Peter AlilunasPeter Alilunas
Associate Professor
Department of Cinema Studies

105 PLC
541-346-2004
pka@uoregon.edu

Education

B.A., English, University of Oregon, 2006
M.A., Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas at Austin, 2008
PhD, Screen Arts & Cultures, University of Michigan, 2013

Biography

Peter Alilunas is a scholar and adult film historian with particular interest in technology and regulation. He is currently the Associate Department Head of Cinema Studies and the recipient in 2017 of the University of Oregon Ersted Award for Specialized Pedagogy.

Research Statement

How, when, and where adult films have played (and how they have been regulated and controlled) are of special interest to Alilunas, and he works to normalize the study of adult film like any other moving image. His book Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video (2016) explores the history of adult video in North America and argues that it is a key part of the broader home video revolution in the 1970s and 1980s that changed how we understand media and culture. He is currently working on a new book that will trace the pre-history of adult material online, leading to the ways in which we understand the internet today. Alilunas is also interested in censorship, media regulation, exhibition and movie theaters, and film and media histories of all kinds.

He is also interested in censorship, media regulation, and film and media histories of all kinds.

Recent Citations – Publications – Professional Work

  • Coming in January 2023: ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Co-editor with Whitney Strub. 
  • Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video. University of California Press, 2016.
  • “Contemporaneous Mundanity and Regulation by Indifference,” Porn Studies 9.1 (2022): 38-55. 
  • “Playboy TV: Contradictions, Confusion, and Post-network Pornography,” in From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels, 2nd edition. Derek Johnson, ed. New York: Routledge (2022). 
  • “The King is Dead, Long Live the Algorithm: MindGeek and the Digital Distribution of Adult Film,” in Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines. Courtney Brannon Donoghue, Paul McDonald, and Timothy Havens, eds. New York: New York University Press (2021): 277-294.
  • “Far Away, So Close: Technology, Spectatorship, and the Pasts and Futures of Pornography Studies,” Porn Studies 6.2 (2019): 131-143.

Coursework

  • CINE 266: History of Motion Pictures II, 1930-1970

  • CINE 410: Cinema and Censorship

  • CINE 490: Exploitation Cinemas