I received my Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota in 2005, and have been working at ILOS since 2006. I write mainly about comics and graphic novels. I have published a number of essays on the comics journalism of Joe Sacco, with a focus on how his work uses comics art to engage with human rights and the ethics of representing other peoples' pain. Another dimension of my research in Comics Studies considers comics and graphic novels by female creators that focus on women’s lives and experiences, including works by comics artists such as Alison Bechdel, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Leela Corman. I read these women’s texts as making important ethical statements about representations of trauma that are specific to women, such as the difficulties of representing sexual assault and other forms of violence against women. Currently, I am researching the ethics of representations of the built environment in comics and literature; and I have also recently started a new research inquiry into the role of Afro- and Indigenous futurisms in American literature.
I teach a number of courses in the English department, including Introduction to American literature, Multicultural literature, Women writers, The Auto-graphic novel, and Literature and Human Rights. The theoretical background to my teaching includes critical race theory, feminist and queer theory and visual culture studies. I have supervised well over 60 MA theses, and have supervised or co-supervised 3 Ph.D. students as well.
The promotion to professor is especially meaningful to me because my main area of research - Comics Studies - is a relatively recent field, and it is highly interdisciplinary as well. I feel that becoming a professor within this field, I can hopefully inspire or encourage more young researchers to work with comics and graphic novels in their own research. Additionally, the promotion shows that Comics Studies is coming into its own as a serious field of study. Especially within the larger field of literature, where so much has been produced, Comics Studies is new enough where it is possible to contribute to the field with very original research; it is a wide open area, and many new and exciting works are produced every year.