Teaches or has taught the following courses

English 101, Critical Reading and Composition
English 102, Rhetoric and Composition
English 282, Special Topics in Fiction
English 283, Themes in British Writing
English 285, Themes in American Writing
English 287, American Literature
English 288, British Literature
English 309, Teaching Writing in One-on-One Sessions
English 350, Film and Media Studies 350, Introduction to Comics Studies
English 413, Modern English Literature

Film 180, Film and Media Studies 180, Film Culture
Film 240, Introduction to Film Studies

Education

1994-2001 Ph.D. in English Literature, Purdue University
1992-1994 M.A. in English and American Literature, Marquette University
1987-1991 B.A. in English, summa cum laude, Moorhead State University

Publications

Books:

The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse: Taking Risks in the Service of Truth. Critical Graphics. Series Editor Frederick Luis Aldama. Rutgers University Press, 2021.

Autobiographical Comics. Bloomsbury Comics Studies Series. Bloomsbury, 2017.
May Sinclair: Moving towards the Modern. Eds. Andrew J. Kunka and Michele K. Troy. Ashgate Press, 2006.

Peer-Reviewed Publications:

“Lords, Masters, Aces, and Knights: Doug Moench and the Advancement of Comics in the 1980s.” The Other 1980s: Reframing Comics’ Crucial Decade. Ed. Brannon Costello and Brian Cremins. Louisiana State University Press, 2021.

“Adaptation and Racial Representation in Dell/Gold Key Movie and TV Tie-ins.” The Oxford Handbook of Comics Studies. Ed. Frederick Luis Aldama. Oxford University Press, 2020.

“Autobiographics and Miriam Katin’s We Are on Our Own and Letting It Go.” More Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods. Ed. Matthew J. Smith, Randy Duncan, and Matthew Brown. Routledge, 2019.

“Cranky Bosses, Rebellious Characters, and Suicidal Artists: Scribbly, Inkie, and Pre-Underground Autobiographical Comics.” Comics Studies: Here and Now. Routledge Advances in Comics Studies. Ed. Frederick Luis Aldama. Routledge, 2018.

“Crime Genre Fiction in the Graphic Novel.” The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel. Ed. Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, and Stephen Tabachnick. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

“A Contract with God, The First Kingdom, and the ‘Graphic Novel’: The Will Eisner/Jack Katz Letters.” INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 1.1 (2017): 27-39.

“Race and Ethnicity in Comics.” Routledge Companion to Comics. Ed. Roy Cook, Frank Bramlett, and Aaron Meskin. Routledge Press, 2016.

“Intertextuality and the Historical Graphic Narrative: Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner and the Styron Controversy.” Special issue on “Visual Narratives.” College Literature. 38.3 (2011): 168-93.

“The Evolution of Mourning in Siegfried Sassoon’s War Writing.” Modernism and Mourning. Ed. Patricia Rae. Bucknell University Press, 2006.

Encyclopedia Entries:

“Black Condor,” “Blackhawk (I),” “Blackhawk (II),” “Crandall, Reed,” “Fine, Lou,” “Kane, Gil (I),” “Kane, Gil (II),” “Hellblazer (III),” “Hellblazer (IV),” “Thomas, Roy (II),” “Thomas, Roy (III),” and “Thomas, Roy (IV).” The Comics through Time: An Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. M. Keith Booker. Greenwood Press, 2014.

“Black Condor,” “Hellblazer,” “Kane, Gil,” “Richie Rich,” and “Wolfman, Marv.” Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels. Ed. M. Keith Booker. Greenwood Press, 2010.

“Parade’s End” and “The Divine Fire.” Cyclopedia of Literary Places. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2003.

“War Movies.” The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Ed. Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast. 5 Vols. Farmington Hills, Michigan: St. James Press, 1999.

Book Reviews:

Review of Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey, The Graphic Novel: An Introduction. South Central Review, 32.3 (2015).

Review of Jaime Hernandez, God and Science: The Return of the Ti-Girls. Image/Text, 7.1 (2013).

Review of Marc Singer, Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics. American Studies, 52.2 (2013).

Review of Charles Hatfield, Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature in the U.S., 32.3 (2007).

Review of Christine Froula, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-garde: War, Civilization, Modernity. Journal of British Studies, 46.1 (January 2007).

Review of George M. Johnson, Dynamic Psychology in Modernist British Fiction. Modern Fiction Studies, 53.4 (Winter 2007).

Review of Celia Malone Kingsbury, The Peculiar Sanity of War: Hysteria in the Literature of World War One. Modern Fiction Studies 50.2 (2004): 511-13.

Review of Stuart Sillars, Structure and Dissolution in English Writing, 1910-1920. Modern Fiction Studies 46.4 (2000): 1034-36.

Review of Trudi Tate, Modernism, History and the First World War. Modern Fiction Studies 45.2 (1999): 516-20.

Review of Phyllis Lassner, British Women Writers of World War II: Battlegrounds of their Own. Modern Fiction Studies 44.4 (1998): 1024-27.

Review of Major Authors on CD-Rom: Virginia Woolf. Modern Fiction Studies 44.2 (1998): 449-51.

Review of Martha Fodaski Black, Shaw and Joyce: The Last Word in Stolentelling. James Joyce Literary Supplement 9.2 (1995): 14.

Presentations or Performances

“Howard Cruse’s War on the War on Obscenity.” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900. Louisville, KY, 24-26 February 2022.

“Twice Loved, Four Frightened Women, and Mansion of Evil: Dell and Fawcett’s Precursors to the Graphic Novel.” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900. Louisville, KY, 20-22 February 2020.

“Adaptation and Racial Representation in Dell/Gold Key Movie and TV Tie-ins.” Mind the Gaps: The Futures of the Field. 1^st Annual Comics Studies Society Conference, Champaign-Urbana, IL, 9-11 August 2018.

“Where Are the Comics Studies Jobs?” Roundtable Organizer, Chair, and Presenter. Mind the Gaps: The Futures of the Field. 1^st Annual Comics Studies Society Conference, Champaign-Urbana, IL, 9-11 August 2018.

“Dell Comics and the Comics Code: The Case of The 87th Precinct.” International Comic Arts Forum, Seattle, WA, 2-4 November 2017.

"Scribbly, Inkie, and Pre-Underground Autobiographical Comics.” Canon Fodder. CXC Comics Symposium, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 13-14 October 2016.

"‘How else could I have created a black boy in that era?’: Modernism, Racial Caricature, and Will Eisner's Legacy.” 16th Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association, Pittsburgh, PA, 6-9 November 2014.

“Why Did Matt Kindt Light My Book on Fire? Materiality and Creative Destruction in MIND MGMT and Red Handed.” 2nd Annual Illustration, Comics, and Animation Conference, Dartmouth College, 28 February-2 March 2014.

“A Contract with God, The First Kingdom, and the ‘Graphic Novel’: The Will Eisner/Jack Katz Letters.” The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Grand Opening Festival of Cartoon Art, Ohio State University, 14-17 November 2013.

“How Do You Solve a Problem Like Chop-Chop?: Superreaders and the Racial Politics of Continuity.” Illustration, Comics, and Animation Conference, Dartmouth College, 19-21 April 2013.

“A Work of Its Time and a Timeless Work: The Spirit, Ebony White, and Will Eisner’s Legacy.” Session on Black Studies in Comics. Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association, Boston, MA, 4-6 January 2013.

“Intertextuality and the Historical Graphic Narrative: Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner and the Styron Controversy.” The 39th Annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, 24-26 February 2011.

“Retcon and Race: The Many Faces of Chop-Chop, 1941-Present.” Graphic Engagements Conference, Purdue University, 4 September 2010.

"Intertextuality and the Historical Graphic Novel: Kyle Baker's Nat Turner." Session on Comic Transformations: Reading Graphic Narrative as Adaptive/Adapted Text. Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association, San Francisco, CA, 30 December 2008.

“Caricature, Cartooning, and Race in the Graphic Narratives of Kyle Baker and Gene Luen Yang.” The 36th Annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, 21-24 February 2008.

“Getting It Straight: Heterosexuality as a Cure for Shell-shock in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Peter Wimsey Novels.” The First World War and Popular Culture Conference, Newcastle, UK, March 2006.

“Revising Historical Trauma in Random Harvest.” War in Film, Television, and History Conference, Dallas, TX, November 2004.

“Duck and Cover: Uncle Scrooge Goes to Vietnam in ‘The Treasure of Marco Polo’ (1966).” Popular Culture Association of the South Conference, New Orleans, LA, September 2004.

“‘It slipped my memory’: (Mis)Understanding Historical Trauma in Random Harvest.” 29th Annual Florida State University Conference on Film and Literature, Florida State University, January 2004.

“Combatant Mourning in Siegfried Sassoon’s War Writing.” Philological Association of the Carolinas Conference, Myrtle Beach, SC, March 2003.

“‘The Duty to Run Mad’: Disciplinary and Narrative Control in the 1922 Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into ‘Shell-Shock’.” Georgia Association of Historians Conference, Jekyll Island, GA, April 2002.

“‘Our wonderful war girls’: Female Authority and the Male War Narrative in Evadne Price’s Not So Quiet . . . .” Philological Association of the Carolinas Conference, Asheville, NC, March 2002.

“‘Women mentally maimed’: Shell Shock and Androgyny in the Quest for Female Authority in Evadne Price’s Not So Quiet . . ..” Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 2002.

“May Sinclair’s The Romantic: Shell Shock, Prowar Feminism, and the First World War.” Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 2000.

“Trauma, Repetition, and Narration in Siegfried Sassoon’s War Writing.” Panel on Siegfried Sassoon. Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, December 1999.

“‘A Reconstructionary Tale’: Traumatic Memory and the Failure of Narrative in Ford Madox Ford’s No Enemy.” Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 1999.

“‘The Inward Scream’: Shell-Shock Narratives in World War I Britain.” The Great War Symposium; Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, November 1997.

“‘I Didn’t Say Any Man’: Demimonde as No Man’s Land in Colette’s Cheri and The Last of Cheri.” Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 1997.

“Reading Joyce’s Exiles Through Shaw’s Candida.” Joyce and Modern Culture: The International James Joyce Foundation Conference Brown University, June 1995.

“Making Tracks in the Classroom: Using Generic Expectations to Teach Louise Erdrich’s Novel.” Literature, Learning, and Illumination: Teaching Literary Texts in College Classrooms, Marquette University, April 1995.

“‘We Wouldn’t Actually Want a Woman Around’: Female Authority in Joyce’s Exiles and Pinter’s Betrayal.” Transcultural Joyce: The International James Joyce Symposium, Seville, Spain, June 1994.

Community Service

Contributor and Co-Organizer, Sumter County Comic Arts Symposium, 2015-present
Director and Coordinator, Tournées Festival Film Series, University of South Carolina Sumter, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2016, 2017

Professional Service

Book Review Editor, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society

Board Member, at-large, the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF)

Board Member, The Comics Studies Society

Editorial Board Member, The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics

Editorial Board Member, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Comic Books. Ed. M. Keith Booker. Greenwood Press, 2010

Awards

Awards:

Outstanding Scholarship Award, University of South Carolina Sumter, 2012
The Hugh T. Stoddard, Sr., Outstanding Faculty Award, University of South Carolina Sumter, 2009
South Carolina Governor’s Professor of the Year Nominee, University of South Carolina Sumter, 2004-2005

Grant Awards:

South Carolina Humanities Fast Track Literary Grant for Swan Con, the Sumter Comic Arts Festival, 2019-2020, $3000.00.

RISE Regional Campuses Grant Program Recipient for the Project Howard Cruse: Critical Graphics Series, 2019, $2750.00

South Carolina Humanities Grant for Swan Con: The Sumter Comic Arts Festival, SC Humanities Council, 2018-2019, $6000.00.

Humanities Grant Program Recipient for the Project “Bloomsbury Comics Studies Series: Autobiographical Comics,” Office of the Provost, University of South Carolina, 2015, $16,110.00

RISE Regional Campuses Grant Program Recipient for the Project “A Contract with God, The First Kingdom, and the ‘Graphic Novel’: The Will Eisner/Jack Katz Letters,” University of South Carolina, $7087.00.

Humanities Grant Program Recipient for the Project “Caricature and Race in American Comic Books, 1938-Present,” Office of the Provost, University of South Carolina, 2010, $12,561.76

Tournées Film Festival Grants, French-American Cultural Exchange (FACE) Council, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2016, 2017: $1800-2200 each