You know how you love nothing more than hearing me academically talk about comics and sex and gender and cultural theory and stuff? Shut up! You do! Anyway, I was asked to speak at Barnes and Noble’s Grand Reopening and Harry Potter event this Saturday at the Waterfront Barnes and Noble in Pittsburgh. They’re celebrating…
(I’m about to get fairly geeky here and do some semiotics work.. I’m going to try to not be too academic, because I’m really interested in opinions from everyone) I’ve been pondering a weird thought experiment the last ten minutes or so. We tend to prefer single name signifiers for our political figures as a…
Yesterday was a good movie watching day for me. I already posted my review of Happy Death Day earlier, but since I finally got my Movie Pass card, Steph and I decided to make it a double feature and went to another movie that I had been really looking forward to right after. The biopic…
Kat contemplating socks…. (©PhotoKat 2007) So there‘s thIs weird thing that’s been weighing on my mind for the last month. It started as one of those deep philosophical questions that one just ponders from time to time but over the last 24 hours or so it has become something of an…
If you pay attention to me at all, you might have picked up that I have kind of a preoccupation with sex and gender in comic books and superhero movies. Did you miss that? It’s kind of subtle maybe? Oh it’s not? I talk about it all the fucking time? Huh…. Anyway, here’s something weird…
Weird gendering of holidays and marketing question: So, Steph and I were driving and we heard a commercial for Tommy John underwear. The premise of the commercial was “isn’t it hard to find your dad something for Father’s Day? Why not get him something he really wants. A bunch of attractive, well-fitting, stylish, high-quality underwear…
So in the name of continuing to pimp my academic career… I’ll be speaking TWICE at the 3 Rivers Screenwriters Conference at Point Park University (in Pittsburgh) this weekend. Despite the name, the conference is NOT just for screenwriting. Though there’s plenty of that going on. It’s an academic and professional conference devoted to “the…
Now that my class on comics is over, I can get back to focusing on some of my own work. It’s another one of those times where I am doing some research for a comics paper and so it’s totally useful for me to just outsource some of my research to the internet. In this…
A bunch of people have asked me about the comic book class that I’m teaching this semester (no surprise, since I talk about it here all the time). So, I decided that it might be fun to borrow a page out of Chris Gavaler’s book (err… well, blog) and turn my blog over to four…
Now here’s a concept I haven’t given much thought to. People who follow my Goodreads updates might have noticed that I’ve been spending this summer reading a lot of academic theory books on comics and superheroes. I’m currently reading The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines by Mike Madrid. Good book very…
So my cousin, Denna reshared this meme on Facebook last night and it’s been weighing on my mind ever since. It features pictures of Halle Berry, Janet Jaclson, J-Lo and Kim Kardashian in lingerie with captions showing that each has been married three times and then a picture of David and Tamela Mann posing in their…
What’s geeky? Comics and statistics. What’s really geeky? Using them both together. A couple months ago, I mentioned that I had been tracking sales on comics starring female characters. This was related to an academic paper I was working on (one that I am finishing up to present on Friday). My primary reason for tracking the sales was…