Lyudmila Artemjeva is a Graduate of Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod, 2012. Candidate of Philology, 2017. Dissertation topic: The Architextuality of Anton Chekhov’s Works (1880-1890s). The dissertation is devoted to the influence of Shakespearean allusions on the structure and genre specifics of A. Chekhov’s works. Furthermore, it discusses the problems of translation and the role of Shakespearean references in genre transformation of the translated work. Research interests include comparative literature, cognitive poetics, Shakespeare studies, genre theory, translation. Co-host of a podcast series on literary theory, books, and reading (in Russian).
Erin Bell, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and the Program Director of English for all on-ground campuses of Baker College in Michigan. Her research interests include short fiction, women’s writing, and popular culture. Her work has been published in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, The Explicator, and Lilith: A Feminist History Journal and she has contributions in both The Interior Landscapes of Breaking Bad (Lexington Press, 2019) and Sisterhood, Science and Surveillance in Orphan Black: Critical Essays (McFarland, 2019). She recently completed an essay accepted for publication in a forthcoming edited collection about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (McFarland, 2021). In her free time, she hosts and produces The Phd in Parenting Podcast (available on Google Play, Spotify, and ITunes) with Dr. Judith LaKåmper.
Courtney Bliss, MA, is currently a PhD student in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University. She holds an MA in Popular Culture from BGSU. She is a Popular Culture scholar whose work examines how marked identities are portrayed in media texts. Her thesis, Reframing Normal: The Inclusion of Deaf Culture in the X-Men Comic Books, shows how American Deaf Culture has been unintentionally included in the X-Men comics since the first page of the first issue. Currently she is researching theater fandom through Hamilton: An American Musical and the phenomenon it has become.
Bryan Bove is a PhD student and teaching associate in the American Culture Studies department at Bowling Green State University. He received Master of Arts degrees in Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University and English Literature and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with a minor in Theatre Arts from Linfield College. A member of the Comics Studies Society’s Graduate Student Caucus, Bryan’s research interests include comics studies, queer theory, performance studies, popular culture, fandom, and folklore.
Nathan Carpenter, Ph.D., is the primary coordinator for the Social Media Analytics Command Center and manages computer labs for the School of Communication. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. from Michigan Technological University. He conducts research on the use of social media in pedagogy, including topics such as, “Integrating civic learning outcomes across all majors in a school of communication,” and “If you build it, they will post: The beneficial applications of higher education institutions creating and utilizing social analytics labs”.
Stanford W. Carpenter, PhD, is a former Archaeologist, sometime Comic Creator, and all time Culture Anthropologist who conducts research with an archaeological sensibility and uses comics, memes, and the spoken and written word to communicate with a surrealist vibe. His ethnographic research focuses on media with an emphasis on comics and journalism. He is currently developing Brother-Story and the Correspondent, an NPR affiliate podcast about comics, culture, and the lives of comic creators, critics, fans, and scholars focusing on the ways comics influence culture and culture influences comics.
Heidi Collins teaches French at Mid Michigan College. She has recently completed her dissertation: Post May ’68 French Theatre by Women: The Play of Language and Emotion which explores the interplay of didacticism and sensory engagement in French plays created by women in the 1970s and ‘80s through the theoretical lens of Julia Kristeva. She has presented her preliminary findings at the Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference and the University of Iowa’s World Languages Graduate Organization and Jakobson conferences.
Matthew Cooper is a graduate student pursuing his MFA in Media and Cinema Studies at DePaul University. His work focuses on the political and cultural implications of narrative cinema. He is currently researching the tension between nostalgia and social progress in the contemporary American film industry.
Patrick Drazen was born in 1951, graduated Illinois Wesleyan University (B.A. Speech Communications, ’74) and Southern Illinois University Carbondale (M.S. Speech Communications, ’75). From 1976-1991 he was Music Director and Staff Announcer for WSIU FM, a National Public Radio affiliate. During this time, Japanese manga and anime began growing in American popularity, and Drazen’s interest in the media—and their ability to incorporate Japanese social values and history—led to the writing of three books: Anime Explosion! (2002; 2nd edition 2014), A Gathering of Spirits: Japan’s Ghost Story Tradition (2011) and Holy Anime! Japan’s View of Christianity (2017).
Dr. Andrew Edwards is a comics scholar, writer and educator. He gained his PhD in 2018 with a thesis entitled Intertextuality and Gender in the work of Alan Moore. His current projects include a critical analysis of Moore, Bissette, Totleben and Veitch’s Swamp Thing. He has written articles and reviews for Sequart and Comicon.com. He also works as an Academic Skills Tutor at Wrexham Glyndŵr University in the U.K. He can be followed on twitter @AndrewEdwards88.
Cornelius Fortune is the former senior editor of BLAC (Black Life, Arts and Culture) Detroit magazine and a former editor of the Michigan Chronicle newspaper. His work has appeared in Yahoo News, CinemaBlend, The Advocate, The Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, Midwest Living, and others. He holds an MA in English Literature and teaches composition, as well as poetry and drama, at Jackson College. Currently, he is a PhD student and teaching associate in the American Culture Studies department at Bowling Green State University.
Dr. Vanessa Hintz, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, who received her doctorate in clinical psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. She works as an Assistant Professor at Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI, in addition to maintaining a private therapy practice at Cornerstone Counseling Services. Dr. Hintz is an active proponent of multicultural counseling and theory and works dynamically to understand how individuals make meaning of the world within their various cultural contexts. She is also a self-proclaimed “Geek Therapist,” and incorporates elements of popular culture into treatment and training, when beneficial
Stephen Hund, Ph.D. has published articles on several topics including instructional communication, persuasion, and communication pedagogy. His major research interests include the pedagogy of civic and political engagement, critical thinking, communication skill assessment, and training/mentoring graduate students.
J. Scott Jordan, Ph.D., is a cognitive psychologist who studies the roots of cooperative behavior. He has published four edited books, six special issues of peer-reviewed journals, and over 85 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He utilizes pop-culture narratives to connect course content to the realities of lived life. He has contributed 10 chapters to books in Sperling’s Popular Culture Psychology series, including Supernatural Psychology, Daredevil Psychology, Westworld Psychology, and Black Panther Psychology. He is a co-member of the WGLT Psych Geeks podcast, and has appeared on the bodyselfmind podcast. He is extremely proud of his international comic book collection.
Trinidad Linares (M.A., Popular Culture) is Area Chair for Subculture for the Midwest Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference 2020. She has contributed to Bitch, Meridians, and The Projector and presented at the Pippi to Ripley Conference (Ithaca College); the Literature/Film Association Conference (Rowan University); Global Responses to 9/11 and the War on Terror: Literary, Media, and Film Perspectives (BGSU); Researching the Romance (BGSU); and two ACA/PCA Conferences. Her chapter “Alternate, Not Arrested Development: Bryan Fuller’s Female Protagonists” is in Buffy to Batgirl: Essays on Female Power, Evolving Femininity and Gender Roles in Science Fiction and Fantasy (McFarland 2019).
Azalia Muchransyah is a filmmaker, writer, and scholar from Indonesia. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo, funded by the 2017 DIKTI Fulbright Scholarship. In 2019 she became a Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) Scholar, a Social Impact Fellow at University at Buffalo, and a Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival Diversity Scholar at Ithaca College. Her research is on media activism, specifically for people living with HIV in Indonesian prison settings. Her short films have been officially selected and screened in international festivals and academic conferences.
Kelly Roy Polasek is a Ph.D. Candidate in Literary and Cultural Studies in the English Department at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her research focuses on 20th century antiwar literature and aesthetic theory. She serves on the executive board of Wayne State’s Visual Culture Student Group.
Blue Profitt is a first-year Ph.D. student in English (Media, Cinema, and Digital Studies) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research interests include midcentury American film, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and écriture féminine. In 2019, she successfully defended a master’s thesis emphasizing the importance of de-Oedipalizing psychoanalytical theory by focusing on narcissism, using the original Star Wars trilogy as her case study. Currently, she is developing a project on melodramatic masculinity and the female gaze in American “greaser films” from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Melissa Sharpe is a former middle school, high school, and college instructor as well as a two-time graduate of Wayne State University (BA in English, MA in teaching). She currently works in curriculum design and development, while also occasionally publishing short stories. Her work has appeared in Redivider, Pennsylvania English, and 3288 Review among others. She also maintains a minimal online presence at https://melissa-sharpe.com and @melissasawthis on Instagram.
Whitney Thompson (she/her) is a recovering grad student who received her MA in communication and multimedia from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She has appeared at conferences as far afield as Australia, usually talking about superheroes, cultural memory, or some combination thereof. She also produced, researched, and co-hosted a limited-run longform podcast called Yelling About Superheroes, which is… exactly what it sounds like.
Ella Tucan is a Ph.D. Candidate in English at Wayne State University, with a concentration in Film and Media Studies. She earned her M.A. in Communication at Georgia State University, where she taught film history, aesthetics, and analysis, as well as courses in journalism and mass media. Her interests center on affect theory, sensation and embodiment, with an emphasis on gender, the female body and sexuality. Her article on the nonhuman body and sensation in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin is forthcoming in Modern Language Studies.
Eric D. Wesselmann, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology at Illinois State University. He conducts research on the interface between psychology and popular culture. He has contributed chapters to books on diverse media, such as comics (Black Panther Psychology, Joker Psychology, Wonder Woman Psychology) and TV shows (Star Trek Psychology,Supernatural Psychology). He has participated in convention panels at the Comics Studies Society, Comic Con Revolution, Wizard World Chicago, and San Diego Comic Con. He is a co-member of the WGLT Psych Geeks podcast series and curates a film series for The Normal Theater (Normal, IL) called Film CULTure.
Zachary Williamson is an MA student in Liberal Studies at the New School for Social Research. His research interests include cultural studies, literature, posthumanities, critical theory, and continental philosophy. Zachary is particularly interested in materialist rhetorics at the end of Humanity and their effects on conceptions of identity, agency, Being, and becoming.
Panagiotis Zestanakis is a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Media and Communication, University of Hamburg working in the project Between Pleasure and Anxiety? Α History of Information Technology in the Global South (mid 1970-mid 1990s). He earned his PhD in contemporary european history from the University of Crete in 2017. His research interests include the history of everyday life in post-authoritarian societies, the history of media and the uses of history in web cultures. His work has appeared in several international journals such as Cultural History, Journal of Consumer Culture and Transfers and in edited volumes in English, Spanish and Greek.