Karen Tongson

Karen Tongson is the author of Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us (NYU Press, 2023); Why Karen Carpenter Matters (UT Press, 2019), named by Pitchfork as a Best Music Book of 2019; and Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries (NYU, 2011). In 2019, she was awarded Lambda Literary’s Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction.

She directs the Mellon-funded Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture at University of Southern California Dornsife, where she is also Chair of Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, English, and American Studies and Ethnicity. She co-hosts the podcasts The Gaymaking Race with Nicole J. Georges, and The Art of Queer Grief with Dr. Megan Auster-Rosen. Tongson is currently a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University (2024-25), and in Spring 2025 will be NYU Steinhardt’s LeBoff Visiting Scholar in Media, Culture, and Communication.