Wendy Peters

About

Biography

Dr. Wendy Peters works in the area of critical media studies and has research and teaching interests that include textual analysis, political economy and audience reception. Specifically, Wendy explores how media are integral to the reproduction, negotiation and securing of privilege and marginalization along axes of sex, gender, race, class and sexuality. Dr. Peters’ research primarily focuses on queerness and depictions of non-straight characters on television. All relevant publications are listed below.

Dr. Peters teaches the following courses: Gender and the Media; Queer Media; Race and Gender in Popular Culture; Reality TV and the Politics of Difference; Sex, Body and Identity, and Women, Media and Representation. Wendy won the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2023.

Positions

Full-time Faculty

Faculty of Arts and Science - Social and Cultural Studies - Sociology

Graduate Program Faculty

Graduate Studies - Sociology, MA

Education

BA, University of Winnipeg

MA, University of Toronto

PhD, University of Toronto

Research Interests / Areas

Areas of Specialization:

critical media studies; critical race theory; cultural studies; feminist theory; postmodernism; queer theory

About

Publications

McDonald, Robin Alex & Peters, Wendy (forthcoming December 2025). Screening the Subject: A Review of Multimedia and Video Artworks in the Exhibition Scientia Sexualis. Screen Bodies, 10(2). Both authors contributed equally to this work.

McDonald, Robin Alex & Peters, Wendy (2025). “If the art ends up being pretty, making it here won’t be”: Examining Precarity, Neoliberalism, and Artists’ Labour on CBC’s Crash Gallery. Canadian Journal of Communication, 50(2), 249–277. doi:10.3138/cjc-2024-0056. Both authors contributed equally to this work.

Peters, W. (2022) “I’m the Industry Baby:” The Political Economy of Lil Nas X. Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, 29(2). URL: https://www.flowjournal.org/2022/10/overflow-im-the-industry-baby/

Peters, W. (2022). Post-feminist, post-race and post-closet discourses in Critical Studies in Media Communication from 2000-2020. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 44 (5): 469-492. doi: 10.1080/10714413.2021.2007207

Peters, W. (2018). Patient Stories: Re-narrating Illness and the Value of the Rejected Body (307-322). In Batacharya, S. & Wong, R. (Eds.) Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization. Athabasca University Press: Edmonton, AB. http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120269

Peters, W. (2018). The Privilege of Knowing Better: Female Millennial Demographics and the Representation of Homophobia on Teen TV. Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, 3(2): 191-211.https://doi.org/ 10.1386/qsmpc.3.2.191_1

Peters, W. (2018). Review of Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: "Not Just a Phase." Feminist Media Studies, 18(2): 331-332.https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1436906

Peters, W. (2016). Contours of the Closet: Conceptualizing Straight / Gay on Teen TV. FlowTV: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, 22(5). URL:http://www.flowjournal.org/2016/03/contours-of-the-closet/

Peters, W. (2016). Bullies and Blackmail: Finding Homophobia in the Closet on Teen TV. Sexuality & Culture (iFirst, February 5 2016). For those with university access this article is currently available online ahead of the print version athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12119-016-9336-3

Peters, W. (2016) Victim + bully = love.FlowTV: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, 22 (3). URL:http://www.flowjournal.org/2016/01/victim-bully-love/

Peters, W. (2015). Teen TV’s post-closet and postracial fictions.FlowTV: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, 22 (1). URL:http://flowtv.org/2015/10/teen-tvs-post-closet-and-postracial-fictions/

Peters, W. (2011). Pink dollars, White collars: Queer As Folk, valuable viewers, and the price of gay TV. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 28 (3): 193-212. (6% acceptance rate).For those with university access this article is online athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2011.559478

Peters, W. (2009). “It feels more like a parody”: Canadian Queer As Folk viewers and the show they love to complain about. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 13 (1): 15-24. For those with university access this article is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07380560802314094

Above article was invited for reprint in S. E. Cooper (Ed.) (2010) Lesbian Images in International Popular Culture. Routledge: New York, NY.

Peters, W. (2005). Queer identities: Rupturing identity categories and negotiating meanings of queer. Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme, 24 (2/3): 102-107.

Peters, W. (2003). Pretty, witty and White: Disrupting hetero-normalcy and reinventing privilege on Queer As Folk. Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, 22 (2): 135-137.

Peters, W. (1999). T.V.’s not evil, I am. broken pencil, 11 (Fall), 28.Independent Publications / Zines

The following listings are independent publications made for small-scale distribution.

Women’s Studies Studies Union (Eds.) (2005). The Cut’n’Paste Yearbook. ASSU: Toronto, ON. Conceptualized, co-ordinated and created this independent publication on behalf of and together with members of the Women’s Studies Student Union.

Peters, W., Bourgeois, M., Odette, F. & L. Dolmage (Eds.). (2001). Dis’n’tangle. 72 pages. Rainbow Alliance: Toronto, ON. An independent publication concerning queerness and disability. This zine is presently required reading on the syllabi for two University of Toronto courses: Theorizing Deviant Bodies and Gender and Disability.

Peters, W. (2000). Foucault: Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby. Beating Around the Bush, 1, (Fall). Publication funded by Pussy Willow Womyn’s Health Collective and OPIRG: Toronto, ON.

Peters, W. & Pearce, L. (Eds.). (1999) doubleshift: Ladies Home Journal of Feminist Activism. 52 pages. Becky Lives: Winnipeg, MB. This zine received an excellent review in broken pencil magazine (Fall 1999, issue 11, pg. 35).

Peters, W. (1998) I-Rate. 10 pages. A zine concerned with the struggles of applying to graduate schools.