Academic

I have always been interested in literature and media. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon in 1998 and beginning my career as a UX designer, I found myself being drawn to continue working as an academic. After several years of doing research on my own as an independent scholar, I officially returned to academia full time in 2012, completing my Masters at Carnegie Mellon, and entering the PhD. program in English at Duquesne University in 2013. Since August of 2022, I have been an Assistant Teaching Professor of English in the Digital Narrative and Interactive Design program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Education

• Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Ph.D in English with a certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies – August 2022
• Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Double B.A. in Creative Writing/Literary and Cultural Studies with a minor in Art – May 1998
  • M.A. in Literary and Cultural Studies — May 2013

Research Interests

My primary field is 20th Century American Literature with an emphasis on Pop Culture. My research generally focuses on representations of gender, race and class in comics, television, movies and professional wrestling. I am interested in the exploration modern popular culture phenomena. I am a firm believer in the practice of cultural analysis through firsthand immersion. As such, I have also written comics, worked as an erotic and glamour photographer and for a while I was even a professional wrestler. In each of these cases, I have not only studied scholarly works on these subjects, but also directly engaged myself in the subcultures themselves. I use what I learn from these experiences to directly influence my later writings on the subject matter.

Academic Awards

• 2022 Gilbert Seldes Prize for Public Scholarship Honorable Mention – Comics Studies Society
• 2019 McAnulty College Dissertation Fellowship
• 2019 McAnulty Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Scholarship
• 2018 Lent Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies in Comics – Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA)
• 2016 Nimick Forbesway Foundation Graduate Diversity Fellowship

Academic Publications

• “No Tights, No Flights: How Smallville put the ‘Human’ in ‘Superhuman’” – Adapting Superman: Essays on the Transmedia Man of Steel – McFarland Press – Edited Collection – May 2021 – pp. 158-172
• “Wakanda Forever! (except for that one time…): The Black Panther Party, Apartheid and the Brief Identity Crisis of the Black LEOPARD?!?” – Ages of the Black Panther: Essays on the King of Wakanda in Changing Times – McFarland Press – Edited Collection – May 2020 – pp. 64-75
• “Lost History: The Re-Humanization of Nazi Germany” – The Journal of Comics & Culture – Pace University Press – New York – Fall 2019 – pp. 49-54
• “Review of Jessica Jones, Scarred Superhero: Essays on Gender, Trauma and Addiction in the Netflix Series edited by Tim Rayborn and Abigail Keyes” – Journal of American Culture – Wiley Periodicals – New York – Winter 2019 – pp. 71-72
• “Oracle of the Invisible: Sexual Assault and Rape in The Killing Joke” – The International Journal of Comics Art – Spring/Summer 2018, Vol. 20. No. 1 – Drexel Hill, PA (invited and accepted after editorial review) – pp. 418-429
• “Review of The Superhero Costume: Identity and Disguise in Fact and Fiction by Barbara Brownie and Danny Graydon” – ImageText: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies – Spring 2017. Vol. 9. No. 1 – University of Florida – online only (mss. 11pp)
• “Disavowal of the Innocent: ‘Sally The Sleuth’ and the Survivor Narrative” ­– U.S. Studies Online – British Association for American Studies –May 2017 – Staffordshire, England – online only (mss. 6pp)

Keynote Presentations

• 2019 Mount Aloysius College (MAC) Charity Con – Cresson, PA. — “Practically Impractical: Superhero Costumes, Fantasy Armor, Impossible Bodies, the Male Gaze and Wish Fulfillment”
• 2019 Young Scholars of McKeesport Charter School – Pittsburgh, PA.  “So You Want to Make Comics?”
• 2018 Barnes & Noble Explore the Magic – Pittsburgh, PA.  — “Don’t You Want to Rev Up Your Harley: The Destigmafication of Female Sexuality through Insanity in DC’s Harley Quinn”
• 2018 Mount Aloysius College (MAC) Charity Con – Cresson, PA.  — “I’m Not Bad, I’m Just Drawn That Way…Ok, MAYBE I’m Bad: Hypersexualization and the SEXPOT Supervillainess”
• 2017 Mount Aloysius College (MAC) Charity Con – Cresson, PA. — “Ten to Seventy-Five Years Ago during WWII:  Multiple-Choice Continuity and the Head Canon of Superhero Mythology”
• 2017 Three Rivers Screenwriters Conference (3RSC) – Pittsburgh, PA. — “I Wear My Underwear on the Outside: Performative Gender, Sexuality and the Costume in Superhero Comics and Movies”
• 2015 Homewood Children’s Village – Community College Allegheny County (CCAC), Northside – Pittsburgh, PA. — “So You Want to Make Comics?”

Conference & Panel Presentations

• 2022 Canadian Society for the Study of Comics (CSSC/SCEBD) Conference – Online
  • Panelist – “Polyamory Fixes Everything… and Breaks It: Non-Mononormativity in Modern Superhero Comics” – Panel: “Comics and Kink”
• 2022 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Conference – Online
  • Session Chair and Panelist – “Eduction of the Innocent: Normalizing Sex Positivity Through Perversion and the Semiotics of the ‘Comic Book Gaze’” – Panel: “Comics and Comic Art: Gender Strikes Back
  • Panelist – “A Roundtable discussion of Maus”

• 2021 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Conference – Online
  • Panelist – “What Were Superheroes?: Rethinking the Monomyth in the ModernPostmodernDeconstructiveReconstructive RIGHT NOW? Age of ComicGraphicNovelGeekPopular MUNDANE? Culture”
• 2021 Duquesne University Day for Learning and Speaking Out (DLSO) against Racial Injustice – Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Panelist – Round Table: “’I’m Not Racist But…’: The Rhetoric of Harmful Language and Navigating Uncomfortable Conversations”
• 2020  TheoCon Theology and PopCulture Conference (Θeocon) – Online
  • Panelist – Round Table: “TheoCon Podcasters Pop-culture Forecast”
• 2019  TheoCon Theology and PopCulture Conference (Θeocon) – Mechanicsburg, PA.
  • Panelist – Round Table: “Jordan Peele & Horror”
• 2019 Mount Aloysius College (MAC) Charity Con – Cresson, PA.
  • Panelist – Round Table: “The Ethics of the Multiverse”
  • Panelist and Session Chair – Round Table: “Comics, Sci-Fi, Fantasy: What is Geek Culture”
• 2019 Wizard World Pittsburgh –Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Session Chair and Panelist – Round Table: “Does Pop Culture Matter?”
• 2019 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Conference – Washington DC.
  • Session Chair and Panelist – “I Didn’t Know Backs Could Bend That Way: ɸ, The Uncanny Valley, The Male Gaze and Liefeldian Anatomy” – Panel: “Historical Perspectives Deux”
  • Panelist – Round Table: “Stan Lee”
• 2019 Bowling Green State University Batman in Popular Culture Conference – Washington DC.
  • Panelist – Round Table: “The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Batman” – Panel: “Comics and Comic Art: Comics on the Screen”
• 2018 Mount Aloysius College (MAC) Charity Con – Cresson, PA.
  • Panelist – Round Table: “Superman ‘Red Son’”
  • Panelist and Session Chair – Round Table: “Heroes, Villains & Antiheroes”
• 2018 Three Rivers Comicon (3RC) Annual Convention – Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Panelist and Session Chair – Round Table: “Comic Con Culture”
• 2018 Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Convention – Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Panelist – “Captain Falcon vs. Captain Hydra: Superheroes and Identity Politics in Trump’s America” – Panel: “Of Superpowers and Privilege: Diversity in Superhero Narratives” –
• 2018 Southern Sociological Society (SSS) Annual Conference – New Orleans, LA.
  • Session Chair and Panelist – “Heel to the Chief: Donald Trump and the New World Order of Politics” – Panel: “Wrestling Professionally with Donald Trump”
• 2018 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Conference – Indianapolis, IN.
  • Session Chair and Panelist – “In Defense of a Thundering Dumbass: Marvel’s Self-Conscious Critique of White Masculinity in Iron Fist and The Defenders” – Panel: “Comics and Comic Art: Comics on the Screen”
  • Panelist – Round Table: “Green Lantern at 78: The Emerald Knight in Context”
• 2017 Mount Aloysius College (MAC) Charity Con – Cresson, PA.
  • Session Chair and Panelist – Round Table: “Patty Jenkins vs. James Cameron and the Legacy of the first Wonder Woman Film”
  • Session Chair and Panelist – Round Table: “ Strange, Ghost in the Shell, Iron Fist, and Hellboy: The Crisis of Whitewashing”
• 2017 Three Rivers Screenwriters Conference (3RSC) – Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Session Chair and Panelist – Round Table: “Comic Book Film Adaptations”
  • Panelist – Round Table: “Aliens, Vampires and Spies, Oh My!: Genre in American Cinema”
• 2017 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Conference – San Diego, CA.
  • Panelist – “Oracle of the Invisible: Sexual Assault and Rape in The Killing Joke” – Panel: “Comics and Comic Art: Superheroes, Gender, and Violence”
  • Panelist – Round Table: “Comic Strip and Editorial Cartoon Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction”
  • Panelist – Round Table: “Wonder Woman at 75: The Amazon Princess in Context”
• 2016 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Conference – Seattle, WA.
  • Panelist – “‘Don’t Ya Wanna Rev Up Your Harley?’: Feminine Sexual Power as Agency in Superhero Comics and Cosplay” – Panel: “Comics and Comic Art: Violence and Feminism”
  • Session Chair – Panel: “Theatre & Drama: Wrestling as Theatre”
• 2015 Wizard World Pittsburgh –Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Panelist – Round Table: “1940: World War II and Comics: The Joker, Robin, The Flash, Captain America, Captain Marvel, and The Spirit!”
• 2015 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Conference – New Orleans, LA.
  • Panelist – “Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Man, I Learned From Professional Wrestling” – Panel: “Theatre & Drama: Professional Wrestling – Spectacle & Performance”
• 2013 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Confernece – Washington DC  
  • Panelist – “Changing Faces: The Evolution of a Professional Wrestling Champion and the Society that Creates Him” –Panel: “Theatre & Drama: Performance in Professional Wrestling”
• 2013 Carnegie Mellon Working Class Studies Graduate Conference – Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Panelist – “Changing Faces: The Evolution of a Working Class Champion” – Panel: Living Labor: Towards a New Understanding of the Working Class
• 2011 Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference – Chicago, IL.
  • Panelist – “Is it Fake? The Art of Storytelling in Professional Wrestling.” – Panel: “Staging Violence: Shifting Views of Performance in Professional Wrestling and Sports Entertainment”
• 2011 Comparative Drama Conference (CDC) – Los Angeles, CA.
  • Panelist – “The Mythology of Pain: An Analysis of the Varying Degree of Perceived Lethality of Professional Wrestling Maneuvers Due to Changes in Audience Suspension of Disbelief Over Time” – Panel: Between the Ropes: “The Theatrical Study of Professional Wrestling”
• 2010 Pittsburgh Small Press Festival (SPF) – Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Panelist – Round table: “So You Want To Write Your Own Comic?” – Panel: “Independent Comic Authors and Publishers”
• 2008 Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association (PCA/ACA) Conference – Boston, MA.
  • Panelist – “My Life as a Professional Wrestler: A Firsthand Critical Analysis of Professional Wrestling as Performance Art” – Panel: “Masculinities”

Academic Interviews

• 2019 – “Those Who Can, Teach: Interview with Christopher Maverick” by Ayana Underwood – The Journal of Comics and Culture – Fall 2018, Vol 3. – Pace University Press – New York
• 2018 – “Sports-entertainment scholars unafraid to mix it up in the ring” by Jules Bentley– Gambit: Best of New Orleans – New Orleans, LA.

Media Appearances

• Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow! – 2021-Present – Host – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Vox Populorum: The VoxPopcast – 2018-Present – Host – Pittsburgh, PA.
• Writers and Fighters – 2021 – Guest  – Salt Lake City, UT.
• The X-Wife Podcast – 2021 – Guest  – Providence, RI.
• There Was an Idea – 2021 – Guest  (2 appearances) – New York, NY.
• Conver-Station – 2021 – Guest  – Los Angeles, CA.
• The Cosmic Geppetto Podcast – 2021 – Guest (2 appearances) – York, PA.
• Disney Animation Minute Essentials – 2021 – Guest (3 appearances) – Orem, UT.
• The Deconstruction Workers – 2020 – Guest (2 appearances) – Colorado Springs, CO.
• IBM TV – 2020 – Guest – Raleigh, Durham, NC.
• Church of the Geek – 2019 – Guest – Pittsburgh, PA.
• The City of Man Podcast – 2019 – Guest (2 appearances) – Bolivar, MO.
• The Sectarian Review – 2018-Present – Recurring Guest – Cresson, PA.
• The Protagonist Podcast – 2018-Present – Recurring Guest – Orem, UT.
• Serotonin After Dark – 2014 – Guest – PCTV Studios – Pittsburgh, PA.
• Comics Continuum – 2011 – Guest – TV20 – Detroit, MI.
• TGT Webcomics – 2010-2011 – Guest (2 appearances) – Leamington, Ontario, Canada
• Comicbook Pitt – 2010, 2011, 2019 – Guest (4 appearances) – Pittsburgh, PA.
• The Awesomecast – 2010, 2019 – Guest (2 appearances) – Sorgotron Media – Pittsburgh, PA.
• The Wrestling Mayhem Show – 2010 – Guest (2 appearances) – Sorgotron Media –Pittsburgh, PA.
• The Handsome Genius Club Radio Show – 2008-2011, 2020-Present – Recurring Guest  – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• The Half Show – 2008 – Guest (2 appearances) – New York, NY.
• 365Days Video Podcast – 2008 – Host – Montgomery, AL. and Pittsburgh, PA
• IWC: Ignition – 2004-2009 – Performer, Commentator – WBGN-TV – Pittsburgh, PA

Teaching Experience

• University of Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh, PA – Adjunct Instructor (Fall 2021 – present)
• Mount Aloysius College – Cresson, PA – Adjunct Instructor (Fall 2020 – present)
• Duquesne University – Pittsburgh, PA – Teaching Fellow & Adjunct Instructor (Fall 2013 – present)