Matthew Brake is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northern Virginia Community College. He is the series editor of the Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture series from Lexington/Fortress Academic, and the co-editor (with A. David Lewis) of the forthcoming Religion and Comics series from Claremont Press.
Zaria Cannon is a graduate from Michigan State University, with a major in Arts & Humanities and a Minor in Comic art and Graphic Novels. She has been accepted into The Center For Cartoon Studies where she will attain her Master of Fine Arts degree. She has published two different comics before this class, and all three of her works are being held in Michigan State’s library.
Jake Zawlacki is currently an MFA candidate at Louisiana State University. He holds degrees from the University of San Diego and Stanford University and has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship. He has written on academic subjects including the aesthetics of Soviet dictators, Kazakh animation and folklore, and popular comics of the early 1990s.
Jason D. DeHart is an assistant professor of reading education at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. DeHart’s research interests include upper elementary/adolescent literacy, comics and film, and multimodal literacy. His work has been published in English Journal and The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, among other publications.
Claudia Kramer is a graduate of the Materials Science and Engineering department of Michigan State University. She is currently applying to medical school and hopes to become a doctor. This is her first published work, but her interests in comics include YA stories and graphic novels.
Kaitlyn Mi is earning her Masters of Public Health Student at Dartmouth. She graduated with a B.S. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University, which is where she first learned about medical illustration and medical comics and where she drew “When You Hear Hoofbeats.”
Chandler Mordecai is a graduate student at the University of Florida pursuing a Ph.D. in English. Her research and teaching interests focus on Victorian literature, multimodal pedagogy, and the intersections of community activism and digital rhetoric.
Noah Mullens is an English graduate student at University of Florida. He received his bachelor’s degree in English and Philosophy in Fall 2019. His main areas of focus are children’s literature, queer studies, and archival research. In recent years, he interned at the Baldwin Library and is now co-curating the guide Historical Diversity and Representation in the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature.
Brian Olszewski has taught literature and writing courses at Radford University and Michigan State University. He currently is editing his novel manuscript, occasionally proofreading science-fiction stories and thinking of others that he should write.
Jesse Matlock is a PhD student in English at Indiana University Bloomington. His studies concentrate on narrative theory of metafiction, its didactic function, and the use of metafictional techniques in novels and comics (but also in film and theatre) as a metaphysical model. He earned his MA in English from Arkansas State University (2019) and his BA in English from Henderson State University (2004). Superman no. 22 by John Byrne was his first comic book.
Sophia Pan is an English PhD student at the University of Florida. Her research lies in Asian American children’s literature, with a focus on intergenerational familial relations. In researching this field, Sophia’s goal is to shed light on diverse published works that illuminate the multi-faceted Asian American identity.
Victoria Rahbar is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia School of Information and former web services librarian for Hostos Community College of The City University of New York. She earned a Master of Arts in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington. When she isn’t advocating for queer stories and disability representation in manga, she is trying to locate Muslim voices in comics and gtaphic novels. She applies her research to the needs of libraries, speaking on issues around cultural representation in manga at academic conferences and anime conventions.
Justin Wigard, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Distant Viewing Lab at University of Richmond. His work on comics has appeared in INKS, Graphic Medicine, Vault of Culture, Genealogy, KULA, and more. He is co-editor of Attack of the New B Movies: Essays on SYFY Original Films (McFarland Press, 2022), the first academic treatment of SYFY Channel’s original films: Sharknado (2013), 2 Lava 2 Lantula (2016), Frankenfish (2004), etc. Justin is also author of the forthcoming Conversations with Bill Watterson (University Press of Mississippi, 2024). You can find more of his work at https://justinwigard.com/ or on social media @JustinWigard.
Jesse Matlock is a PhD student in English at Indiana University Bloomington. His studies concentrate on narrative theory of metafiction, its didactic function, and the use of metafictional techniques in novels and comics (but also in film and theatre) as a metaphysical model. He earned his MA in English from Arkansas State University (2019) and his BA in English from Henderson State University (2004). Superman no. 22 by John Byrne was his first comic book.