Michelle E. Bloom
Michelle E. Bloom is Associate Professor of French & Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside, where she teaches a French course on La Bande dessinée and classes on “France and Asia.” Following the publication of Waxworks: A Cultural Obsession (Minnesota, 2003), she is completing her second book, on contemporary “Sino-French Cinemas.”
Jonathan Case
Jonathan Case won a 2012 Eisner award with co-creator Jeff Jensen for Green River Killer: A True Detective Story. His work appears in Disney’s Before Tomorrowland (a prequel to the Tomorrowland film) which was released earlier in April. Case is also the creator of the graphic novel Dear Creature. In addition, he produces other works including comics, paintings and animations. Case is a member of the Periscope Studio in Portland, Oregon, where he works with a creative team of 20 comics artists and writers.
John Cech
John Cech is the author of fiction, drama, poetry, and criticism for adults and children, including Angels and Wild Things, the Archetypal Poetics of Maurice Sendak. Cech is Professor of English at the University of Florida, where he also directs the Center for Children’s Literature and Culture (http://cclc.english.ufl.edu/). Cech has been a commentator on children’s culture for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and he was the creator, producer, and host of “Recess!” — the public radio program about the cultures of childhood, which aired nationally from 1998-2006. You can find more information about Cech’s work on his website: www.johncech.com.
Spencer Chalifour
Spencer Chalifour is a PhD candidate at the University of Florida. His research focuses on the independent comics movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the Vertigo comics line. He is also the Vice President of the Graduate Comics Organization at UF.
Anne Cirella-Urrutia
Anne Cirella-Urrutia earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin in 1998 and a D.E.A degree in Anglo-American Studies from Université Paul Valéry at Montpellier, France in 1993. Her research on the French Theater of the Absurd, children’s literature and bande dessinée has appeared in Bookbird, Les Cahiers Robinson, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly Journal, European Comic Art, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, The French Review, and L’Esprit Créateur. An ecocritical essay on the Congolose D. Mwankumi’s picture books appeared in a book entitled Aspects écocritiques de l’imaginaire africain in 2013. A chapter on the shifting images of WWI in J. Tardi and Chris & Maël appeared in a two-volume book entitled Heroic Misery in Germnay in 2013. A chapter on the comics books of Bécassine published during the Great War is forthcoming in a collection of essays entitled Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture during World War I in May 2015. Cirella-Urrutia is an adjunct professor of French at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas.
Cristina Delgado-García
Dr. Cristina Delgado-García is a Teaching Fellow in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. She is also a member of the international research project “Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship,” funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity. Her current research interests revolve around British playwriting and performance, and their intersection with political and ethical concerns. She has published on Virginia Woolf, Sarah Kane and Tim Crouch, and her monograph on contemporary renegotiations of character and subjectivity in British theatre is forthcoming with De Gruyter as part of the CDE Studies series.
Eric Doise
Eric Doise is an instructor with the Peace Corps at Anshun University in Anshun, Guizhou, China, where he teaches culture, writing, Oral English, and literature. He received his PhD from the University of Florida in 2010. His work has appeared in Extrapolation and Film Criticism.
Andréa Gilroy
Andréa Gilroy is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Oregon. She will be defending her dissertation, which focuses on comics studies, narrative, and identity, in the spring of 2015.
Laurie Gries
Laurie E. Gries is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Florida. Her scholarship works to forge connections between new materialism, actor-network theory, and visual rhetoric. In addition to her recently published book Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach to Visual Rhetoric, she has published in journals such as Computers and Composition, JAC, Composition Studies, and Rhetoric Review.
Recent essays by Harpold have appeared in journals such as Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne, Digital Humanities Quarterly, ImageTexT, IRIS, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Revue Jules Verne, Science Fiction Film and Television, Science Fiction Studies, and Verniana; and in edited collections such as Generation Zombie: Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture (2011), Visions of Mars: Essays on the Red Planet in Fiction and Science (2011).
Francesca Lyn
Francesca Lyn is a PhD candidate in the Media, Art, and Text (MATX) program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests center mostly around comics and graphic novels and, more specifically, comic memoirs. Her dissertation is tentatively titled Graphic Intimacies: Identity, Humor, and Trauma in Autobiographical Comics by Women of Color.
Ashley Manchester
Ashley Manchester is a doctoral student in English at the University of Florida. She obtained her master’s degree from Brandeis University in 2012, where she refined her interest in comics studies. Her work specifically focuses on queer graphic narratives and she is currently studying how the formal elements of the medium provide unique possibilities for representing marginalized identities.
Kate Polak
Kate Polak is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Wittenberg University, where she teaches literature and writing. Her latest scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Trespassing, Teaching Graphic Narratives, and Son of Comics and Classics. Her essays have recently been featured in Politics/Letters and The Hooded Utilitarian.
Molly J. Scanlon
Molly J. Scanlon is an Assistant Professor at Nova Southeastern University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate writing courses. She received her PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech. Her research interests include visual rhetoric, comics journalism, and the work of Joe Sacco.
Katherine Shaeffer
Katherine Shaeffer is a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida and the current Production Editor for ImageTexT. Her interests include Medieval and Renaissance literature, popular culture, library and information studies, children’s and YA literature, and comics studies. Her dissertation, currently in progress, is on alchemical iconography in sequential art.
Caleb Simmons
Caleb Simmons is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona. He specializes in religion in South Asia, especially Hinduism. His research specialties span religion and state-formation in medieval and colonial India to contemporary transnational aspects of Hinduism. His current book project examines goddesses and kingship in medieval and early modern South India, exploring the devotional relationship between the court of the South Indian kingdom of Mysore and their tutelary deity Cāmuṇḍēśvari within their genealogical material. He also has publications and continuing research interests related to a broad range of contemporary topics, including ecological issues and sacred geography in India; South Asian diaspora communities; and material and popular cultures that arise as a result of globalization—especially South Asian religions as portrayed in comic books and graphic novels. He teaches courses on Hinduism, Indian religions, and method and theory of Religious Studies.
Anastasia Ulanowicz
Anastasia Ulanowicz is an associate professor of English at the University of Florida, where she teaches courses in children’s literature and the Bible as literature. She is an associate editor of ImageTexT.