Janet Staiger is a theoretician and historian of American film and television. Her current work includes historiographical practices in media studies, problems in the representation of gender (masculinity and queer studies) and sexu­ality and violence (slasher and sexually explicit films), and theorization of emotions and genres.

She is the author of 10 books, including Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception( New York University Press, 2000); Blockbuster TV: Must-See Sitcoms in the Network Era(New York University Press, 2000); and Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema(University of Minnesota Press, 1995). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1981.