Matthew Tchepikova-Treon's Ph.D. Final Defense

Orbiting around a singularly momentous year in the US motion-picture industry, this dissertation examines a vast array of musical forms used in adults-only cinema, a prominent mode of disreputable film production both celebrated and censored for its transgressive tendencies. Animated by innovative engineers, avant-garde artists, and popular musicians, it presents a series of case studies that illustratively cover the low-rent artistry, high-society sleaze, and mass-market appeal of X-rated films writ large. These films are presented here against the backdrop of a much longer historical arc wherein notions of “deviant” sounds took on the “containment culture” paranoia of the Cold War. At every turn, I argue, old prurient fears of an unruly eros were being re-envisioned in sonic terms as sound collided with human bodies and convergent bodies of knowledge that still hold purchase today.

In addition to his relationship with the Department of American Studies, Matthew Tchepikova-Treon joined the University of Minnesota's Department of Writing Studies as a faculty lecturer in 2022.

For Zoom information, please contact Tamara Hageman (hageman@umn.edu).