Professor Keegan’s research and writing analyze the histories and theoretical implications of queer and transgender media representation, aesthetic figuration, and cultural production. Prof. Keegan is intellectually and politically committed to the critical exploration of the popular and has written extensively on transgender and queer affects, ontologies, and phenomenologies as articulated through popular media formats, platforms, and genres. He is the author of Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender and co-editor of "In Focus: Transing Cinema and Media Studies" in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and a special issue of Somatechnics (8.1) on the transgender cinematic body. In 2021-2022, he was a Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University. Keegan currently co-edits the book series Queer Screens with David Gerstner for Wayne State University Press.

Professor Keegan's recent work is interested in the cultural formation of the transgender imaginary and the problems that realism and indexicality pose to the popular expression of transgender life. His current research paradigm--investigating "bad trans objects"--explores the emerging phenomenon of the “good” trans subject and argues for an archive of “bad” trans media objects that might help revivify trans liberation by illustrating the imposed nature of both the male/female and cisgender/transgender binaries. He is currently pursuing this paradigm through two interconnected book projects: First, a title on The Silence of the Lambs for the Queer Film Classics series at McGill-Queen's University Press; and second, a book-in-progress on transgender affect and gaming phenomenologies titled Nopamine: On Gaming, Agony, and Trans Survival.