David Greven, Professor of English at USC, has published a book called Queering The Terminator: Sexuality and Cyborg Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2017). The book covers all of the films in the Terminator film series, beginning with James Cameron's landmark 1984 original, and also the television series The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

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Dr. Greven argues that the Terminator films provide a framework for interpreting shifting gender codes and the emergence of queer sexuality over the period of three decades. As a franchise and on the individual basis of each film, the Terminator series combines both radical and reactionary elements. Each film reflects the struggles over gender and sexuality specific to its release. At the same time, the series foregrounds the intersection of technology and gender that has become a definitive aspect of contemporary experience. A narrative organized around a conservative view of female sexuality and the family, the Terminator myth is nevertheless a richly suggestive narrative for queer theory and gender studies.