Michelle Ann Abate
Michelle Ann Abate is Professor of Literature for Children and Young Adults at The Ohio State University. Her most recent book is Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics (University Press of Mississippi, 2019). Michelle has published peer-reviewed journal articles about a wide array of comics and graphic novels, including Calvin & Hobbes, Garfield, Peanuts, Terry and the Pirates, Little Lulu, In the Shadow of No Towers, and Drama by Raina Telgemeier. She is also the co-editor (with Dr. Gwen Athene Tarbox) of Graphic Novels for Young Readers: A Collection of Critical Essays (University Press of Mississippi, 2017). Michelle has written four other books of literary criticism, including Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History (2008) which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.
Irenae A. Aigbedion
Irenae A. Aigbedion is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park Campus. Her focuses on representations of race and ethnic identity in contemporary literature and visual culture of the Americas.
Willi Barthold
Willi Barthold graduated with a BA in German Studies and History at the University of Dresden, Germany in 2016, and he completed his MA in German Language and Literature at Georgetown University in 2017. His research interests include reflections on media, communication, and social change in 18th to 21st century German literature, the media history of image-text combinations, and literature and visuality. In May 2020, he will defend his dissertation focused on 19th century German literature and the visual culture of its time.
Chamara Moore
Chamara Moore is a PhD Candidate in English at Notre Dame, minoring in Gender and Film Studies. Her research is oriented towards the misogynoir present in films, TV, and comics. Her dissertation examines how writers like Nnedi Okorafor and Octavia Butler have depicted Black women outside of the white imagination. Her project explores the inventive ways in which Black artists like Janelle Monáe and Ava DuVernay have empowered the marginalized across various media platforms, and it interrogates superhero films historically dominated by white masculinity.
Matt Reingold
Dr. Matt Reingold teaches at TanenbaumCHAT, North America’s largest co-educational community Jewish high school where he serves as co-department head of the Jewish History department. He received his PhD from York University in Toronto, Canada and has published articles in the Journal of Comics and Graphic Novels, the Journal of Jewish Education, and The Social Studies.
Juha Virtanen
Juha Virtanen is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. His other publications include the books Poetry and Performance During the British Poetry Revival 1960-1980: Event and Effect (Palgrave Macmillan 2017); -LAND (Oystercatcher Press 2016); Back Channel Apraxia (Contraband Books 2014); and a number of articles on literature and politics. At Kent, he runs an undergraduate course on graphic novels.