List of Contributors

Jessica Bay (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at York and Toronto Metropolitan Universities. She previously completed an MA thesis in popular culture at Brock University titled “The New Blockbuster Film Sequel: Changing Cultural and Economic Conditions within the Film Industry” (2011) and an MA thesis in English at the University of Lethbridge titled “Re-writing Publishing: Fanfiction and Self-Publication in Urban Fantasy” (2014). Her current research examines the marketing strategies of Hollywood franchises in relation to teen fangirls and their practices. Luckily, this research has involved reading a lot of YA fiction and attending a lot of fan conventions—some of Jessica’s favourite pastimes.

Dr. Bridget Blodgett (she/her) is an associate professor and chair of the Division of Science, Information Arts, and Technology at the University of Baltimore. Her research analyzes Internet culture and its social impacts on offline life. Her current research takes a critical eye to online game communities regarding gender, inclusiveness, and identity. Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media (co-authored with Anastasia Salter) was released in 2017 by Palgrave Macmillan and is the summation of this work to date.

Natalja Chestopalova (she/her) is a senior researcher, writer, and multimedia producer at the Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge, OCAD University. Her work is informed by popular culture aesthetics and psychoanalysis and focuses on transformative sensory experiences and multimodality in film, the graphic novel medium, site-responsive performances, and virtual or AI-generated spaces. At Wapatah, Natalja is providing research project oversight for a range of initiatives, including the Indigenizing the (Art) Museum virtual series, Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity, an exhibition and major publication produced in partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and the Virtual Platform for Indigenous Art, a custom digital tool that uses a wiki-style approach and 3D photogrammetry for mobilizing artwork and facilitating Indigenous access and contributions to Indigenous art in museum and gallery collections around the world. Natalja’s publications have been featured in Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, the Canadian Journal of Communication, and Dialogue, and her latest book chapters can be found in the collections The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In, Who’s Laughing Now? Feminist Perspectives on Humour and Laughter, and Television Series as Literature.

Elizabeth DiEmanuele (she/her) is a digital communications professional in higher education and student affairs. She currently works at McMaster University and serves on the board of directors at Rainbow’s End Community Development Corporation. In 2020, she was part of the McMaster University team that received a silver Prix d’Excellence for Best Use of Social Media (“Encouraging students to think global”) from the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education. She completed her MA in English at McMaster University. For the last eight years, Elizabeth’s work has focused on Gen Z research and social media, websites, and storytelling. She currently works at McMaster University’s Student Success Centre and co-chairs the university’s IT Student Advisory Committee. Elizabeth holds a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature (Western University, 2014), and a master of arts in English (McMaster University, 2015).

Caitlynn Fairbarns (she/her) is an artist and arts community organizer in Toronto. Under the name Fake Geek Girls Like Us, she produces art that explores gender, sexuality, mental health, and pop culture. When she isn’t working on her own art practice, she is coordinating events, murals, and zines.

Ian Fitzgerald (he/him) is an independent researcher specializing in genre cinema. He has been published in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies and the textbook The Spaces and Place of Canadian Popular Culture, where he wrote about mall multiplexes. Ian completed his master’s at York University, where he wrote about the contemporary romantic comedy, and currently works for the Government of Alberta.

Arun Jacob (he/him) is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. He completed his master of arts in cultural studies and critical theory and master of arts in work and society at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and his master of professional communication from Toronto Metropolitan University. Arun’s doctoral work unites media genealogy, intersectional feminist media studies, and critical university studies to explore how contemporary university data-management techniques and information-management systems shape our socio-cultural relations, experiences, and knowledge. Arun’s publications have appeared in Debates in Digital Humanities 2023, Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities, Digital Studies/Le Champ Numérique, the College Quarterly, Digital Humanities Workshops: Lessons Learned, Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities, and Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture.

Dr. Catherine Jenkins (she/her) holds a PhD from the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan and York Universities in Toronto, Canada. Her dissertation, “Older Patient-Physician Communication: An Examination of the Tensions of the Patient-Centred Model within a Biotechnological Context,” was nominated for the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal. She is an award-winning lecturer in the School of Professional Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she teaches a Communicating with Comics course. In addition to her literary publications, her current research interests include the medicalization of comic book superheroes.

Dr. Michelle Johnson (she/her) holds an MA in dance (culture and performance studies) from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and a PhD in dance studies from York University. She is a certified movement analyst and somatic practitioner, and her research applies Laban movement analysis to popular media, focusing on the female body in live-action and animated film and television.

Mary Grace Lao (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at York and Toronto Metropolitan Universities and an instructor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Humber Polytechnic. Her doctoral research looks at media(ted) discourses of gender-based violence and rape culture. She is part of a SSHRC-funded project, “The Embodied Tween: Living Girlhood in Digital Spaces,” that examines media constructions of girlhood and its intersections with race and class. Her favourite superhero is Superman.

Dr. Sorouja Moll (she/her) has a PhD in humanities (Concordia) specializing in the fields of communication, English, and art history. She also holds a BA and an MA in English from the University of Guelph. As an interdisciplinary communication scholar, her research-creation practice undertakes a multi-modal critical discourse analysis of all forms of media, including adaptations of Shakespeare in Canada, and an intersectional approach to nineteenth-century archival and narrative-based communication structures and applications and their present-day manifestations in, among other areas, nation, memory, and identity. Moll’s areas of research include the oral histories of mixed-race identity; Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationship rebuilding practices and education as meaningful and sustainable; and creating spaces in which transgression, enunciation, ambiguity, and emancipation can be explored through performance, creative writing, and research practices. Sorouja teaches communication, theatre, and performance studies at the University of Waterloo in the Department of Communication Arts.

Kiera Obbard (she/her) is a PhD candidate in literary studies in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Her SSHRC-funded project “The Instagram Effect: Contemporary Canadian Poetry Online” examines the complex social, cultural, technological, and economic conditions that have enabled the success of social media poetry in Canada. She completed an MA in cultural studies and critical theory at McMaster University and an honours BA with a joint major in English and communication at the University of Ottawa. She is currently a graduate resident at the Humanities Interdisciplinary Collaboration Lab and an editorial board member of the Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies and WaterHill Publishing,

Dr. Brett Pardy (he/them) is an instructor in the School of Culture, Media, and Society at the University of the Fraser Valley. His research focuses on the emotional impact of media on learning and unlearning conceptions about racism, masculinity, community, and mental health. He has previously published work on the militarization of The Avengers.

Pree Rehal (they/them) is an independent researcher with a master’s from the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at York and Toronto Metropolitan Universities. Pree has taught at College Montmorency in Quebec, currently resides in Toronto, and often teaches workshops across the Greater Toronto Area. Their research interests include cosplaying, critical race studies, navigating non-monogamy for racialized trans and queer folks, and the Panjabi diaspora. You can generally find Pree playing Yoshi’s Island, making zines, or buying more plants.

Eric Ross (he/him) is a doctoral candidate in cultural studies at George Mason University, where he currently teaches social justice courses for the School of Integrative Studies. His research and teaching interests include museum studies, memory studies, political subjectivity, and cultural policy.

Dr. Anastasia Salter (they/them) is a professor of English at the University of Central Florida, and the author most recently of Playful Pedagogy in the Pandemic: Pivoting to Games-Based Learning (with Emily Johnson; Routledge, 2022); Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives (with Stuart Moulthrop; Amherst College, 2021); Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider (with Aaron Reed and John Murray; Bloomsbury, 2019); and Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media (with Bridget Blodgett; Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

Dr. Jessica Seymour (she/her) is an Australian researcher and lecturer at Fukuoka University, Japan. Her research interests include children’s and young adult literature, Tolkien studies, popular culture, and literary adaptation. She has contributed chapters to several essay collections on a range of topics, from fan studies, to online/transmedia writing, to TV series like Doctor Who and Supernatural, to eco-criticism in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Dr. Sarah Stang (she/her) is an assistant professor of game studies in Brock University’s Department of Digital Humanities, where she teaches courses in the Game Design and Game Studies Graduate Programs. Sarah is part of the executive committee for the Canadian Game Studies Association as well as the secretary for the International Communication Association’s Game Studies Division. She is on the board of reviewers for Game Studies and on the advisory board for Eludamos, and she is also the former editor-in-chief of Press Start and the former essays editor for First Person Scholar. She received her PhD from the Communication and Culture Program at York University. Her research primarily focuses on gender representation in both digital and analog games. Her published work has analyzed topics such as female monstrosity, body horror, androgyny, parenthood, interactivity, and feminist game studies, and can be found in journals such as Games and Culture, Game Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Human Technology, and Loading, as well as in several edited collections.

Tracey Thomas (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada, and currently is a communications specialist for a credit union. Her dissertation research explores superheroes in the CW’s Arrowverse through the adaptation of graphic novels to the television screen, particularly how superhero characteristics, traits, costumes, settings, and narratives are translated in various mediums. She questions why some elements from the graphic form are kept for adaptation while others are discarded to understand the evolving function of superheroes in our contemporary world. Her other research interests include pop culture adaptation (manga, anime, comics, books), cultural studies, and film studies.