Andrew Scahill

Andrew Scahill is an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Colorado Denver, where he specializes in critical analysis of the horror genre and images of youth rebellion.

Education Scahill received his B.A. and M.A. in English literature from Ohio State University. In 2010, he received his Ph.D. from the Radio-Television-Film department of the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Janet Staiger.

Career Scahill began his teaching career in the English department at George Mason University. He has also taught at American University, University of Maryland College Park, and Georgetown University. In 2015, he joined the English faculty at Salisbury University. In 2017, he took an assistant professor position in the English department at the University of Colorado Denver.

His work focuses upon genre analysis and reception studies, and he is considered a leading authority on the representation of monstrous youth. His book The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer Spectatorship argues that the “revolting child”—whose forms include the child with a dark secret (The Bad Seed), the child who becomes a monster in adolescence (The Exorcist), the child who must be rejected (The Omen), or the child who forms a cabal of outcasts (Village of the Damned)—functions as a metaphor for queer youth. Drawing together film theory, queer theory, childhood studies, and reception studies, The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema examines the fear surrounding young bodies in revolt, and asks what pleasure the unruly child offers for the queer spectator.

Scahill co-edited Lost and Othered Children in Global Cinema (2012) with Debbie C. Olson. Scahill wrote a critical study of the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures as part of a book series from Routledge on the representation of youth in cinema, published in 2019. Scahill has also published work on director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a rhetorical analysis of the Family Movie Act of 2004 and film censorship campaigns, an examination of the television shows Bates Motel and Hannibal as "preboots" of existing horror films, an essay on the John Hughes coming-of-age fantasy film Weird Science, and multiple studies of the work of young contemporary queer filmmakers.

In 2019, Scahill appeared as a horror genre expert in the documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street.

Scahill has served as coordinating editor for The Velvet Light Trap and assistant editor for Literature/Film Quarterly.