Bio and CV

Bio: Professional Background

My scholarly interests are interdisciplinary and center on memory studies, visual studies, and interdisciplinary technology studies. I am a member of the National Association of Comics Arts Educators and absolutely love writing about and researching comics. I am in the midst of seeking out and reading some of the earliest American graphic novels from the 40's and 50's. It is my hope to combine my love of comics and technology and become involved in digital archiving of these forgotten classics. I am presently organizing a conference as part of the Phoenix Comicon. More information can be found here.

Not to cite the obvious, but I am also deeply interested in amusement parks, and especially the history and culture of the smaller amusement parks that popped up across New England in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. These trolley parks had a certain ironic twist- designed for pleasure and an escape from work, they used the same internal technologies and construction materials as the predominant industrial technologies of the time.

I am also a lifelong student, presently studying Digital Information Management at the University of Arizona's School of Library and Information Sciences. This will be my second master's degree and will allow me to focus on interdisciplinary applications of technology. This is my only hobby... it's pretty much all I have time for on top of teaching, studying, working with the preservation community of my town, and running after my daughter, my Shih Tzu, and my Lhasa Apso.

In my professional role at the University of Advancing Technology, I enjoy sharing my love of literature and cultural studies as well as helping graduate students navigate the rough waters of thesis writing and research. I am currently serving as the chair of the graduate college.

Bio: Educational Background

• Coming whenever it's done... MLIS in Digital Information Management, University of Arizona
• Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Visual Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder
• M.A. in English with a concentration in American Studies, Boston College
• B.A. in English with a concentration in Popular Culture Studies, Rhode Island College

Selected Publications

• The Space Between: Ruins, Narratives, and History. Dissertation available through UMI in the spring of 2010.
  
• "Representing Memory with Web 2.0 from SecondLife to Facebook." The Journal of Advancing Technology, Fall 2009.
  
• "Kunstler's World Without Oil: Speculative Fiction, Serious Gaming, and Understanding Future Crises." The Journal of Advancing Technology, Summer 2008.

Selected Presentations

• "History and the Contemporary Graphic Novel," Food for Thought Speakers Series, Changing Hands Bookstore, June 2009.

• "Navigating the Derelict Landscape: The Necessity for Ruins in Seth's Clyde Fans," The Fifth Annual University of Florida Conference on Comics: World Building, Seriality and History, Gainesville, FL, March 2007.

• "Sebald, Nabokov, and the Middle Ground: Ruins and the Reconstruction of Self and History," Southwest/Texas Regional Meeting of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, Albuquerque, NM, Feb. 2007.

• "Where Have all the Cowboys Gone? Historical Preservation Issues in the Southwest," American Studies Association of Texas, Waco, Texas, November 2006.

• "Unfinished Business: The Specter of the Ruin," Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference, CU-Boulder, Sept. 2004.