Slayage 14.1 [43], Winter 2016
Rhonda V. Wilcox, Editor / David Lavery, Founding Editor / Shiloh Carroll, Assistant Editor / Hannah Mixon, Editorial Assistant

Devon Anderson, ​"Echoes of Frankenstein: Shelley’s Masterpiece in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse and Our Relationship with Technology"
  • Devon Anderson teaches Communications at Bethel University. She holds an undergraduate degree in English from Lipscomb University and earned her M.A. in Communication Arts from Austin Peay State University with a thesis on the mythic hero’s journey and the digital posthuman as revealed in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Her academic interests include literature, world mythology, and posthuman theory.
Wayne A. Chandler, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Fang: Geek Lit as Buffy’s Equipment for Living"
  • Wayne A. Chandler is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Missouri State University. The nominal Shakespeare Person there since 2001, in recent years he has also become the Science Fiction Person (and would gladly be the Heavy Metal Person if such were welcome). He has published one book about and one of Renaissance English commendatory verse, and his work has appeared in Renaissance Papers, Extrapolation, Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, and other periodicals.
Debra Jackson, "Throwing Like a Slayer: A Phenomenology of Gender Hybridity and Female Resilience in Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
  • Debra Jackson is associate professor of philosophy at California State University, Bakersfield. Her research focuses on legal, political, and epistemological issues regarding gender and race, especially with regard to sexual violence against women. She has published essays on racialized assumptions in anti-rape discourse (Studies in Practical Philosophy: A Journal of Ethical and Political Philosophy), on the representation of gender, race, and sexuality in online gaming environments (World of Warcraft and Philosophy: Wrath of the Philosopher King), and on crisis intervention and rape survivor advocacy as a form of witnessing trauma (forthcoming in Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life).
Christine Jarvis, "Battle of the Blockbusters: Joss Whedon as Public Pedagogue"
  • Christine Jarvis is pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Huddersfield. Before moving into Higher Education, she taught in adult and community education.  Her research focuses on education and popular fictions and the role of the arts in professional education. She has recently completed a chapter comparing Buffy the Vampire Slayer with contemporary heroines, (‘How to be a woman: models of masochism and sacrifice in YA fiction’) for Popular Culture and Pedagogy, edited by Jubas, Taber and Brown, and is working on a chapter for The Handbook of Adult Education on Popular Fictions as Critical Adult Education.
Jacqueline Potvin, "Pernicious Pregnancy and Redemptive Motherhood: Narratives of Reproductive Choice in Joss Whedon’s Angel"
  • Jacqueline Potvin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario. Her research examines how popular discourses of female sexuality and motherhood influence policy and advocacy work, particularly in relation to matern_al health and reproductive justice.
Philip Smith, “'I Look’d Upon Her with a Soldier’s Eye': The Normalization of Surveillance Culture in Whedon’s Much Ado"
  • Philip Smith obtained his Ph.D. from Loughborough University in 2014. His work has been published in The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Literature Compass, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, International Journal of Comics Art, The Journal of European Studies, Asian Theatre Journal, Slayage, and The Journal of Popular Culture. He blogs for The Hooded Utilitarian. He is co-editor of Firefly Revisited (Rowman and Littlefield) and the author of Reading Art Spiegelman (Routledge). He teaches in Dubai.
Sarah R. Wakefield, "Vamps and Camp: Sci-Fi Television Mocks the Monstrous Texan"
  • Sarah R. Wakefield is an Associate Professor of English and English Program Coordinator at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. Since her very first scholarly article on fans of Dana Scully, she has explored the intersections of gender and the supernatural, whether fairies, goddesses, or vampires.

Slayage 14.2 [44], Summer 2016
Rhonda V. Wilcox, Editor / David Lavery, Founding Editor / Shiloh Carroll, Assistant Editor / Hannah Mixon, Editorial Assistant

Rhonda V. Wilcox, "David Lavery, 1949-2016"

Jessica Hautsch, Jay Bamber, and Bethan Jones, "EuroSlayage 2016 Report"
  • Jessica Hautsch received her Master’s in English Literature from Fordham University and her Master’s in Teaching English from Stony Brook University. She is currently an adjunct instructor at Suffolk County Community College and with the Educational Opportunity Program at Stony Brook University. She teaches composition, literature, and media studies, and her students all know that a surefire way to distract her is by talking about TV, especially Outlander, Penny Dreadful, Game of Thrones, and, of course, Buffy. This is the fourth time her work has appeared in Slayage.
  • Jay Bamber holds a B.A. in English Literature and Film Studies and an MA in Film and Screen Cultures, both from the University of Roehampton. His research interests include children’s film, the horror genre, literary adaptations, and cult television, with a particular interest in how the iconography of the horror film intercepts audio-visual entertainment produced for children. His first two novels, Until There Was You and The Restart Project, are available from Less Than Three Press, and his pop-culture journalism can be found on The Moon Project as well as other online and print outlets.
  • Bethan Jones is a North of England Consortium for Arts and Humanities-funded Ph.D. candidate at the University of Huddersfield. Her thesis builds upon her interest in examining cult television, fandom, and nostalgia through a focus on The X-Files and Twin Peaks revivals. Her work has been published in the journals Transformative Works and Cultures, Participations, and New Media and Society, amongst others, and her coedited collection on crowdfunding was published with Peter Lang in 2015. She is a board member of the Fan Studies Network.

James Rocha, "The Black Reaching Out: An Anarchist Analysis of Firefly"
  • James Rocha is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University at Fresno, where he teaches courses in ethics, applied ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of race, and philosophy and popular culture. He has published in various locations, including Journal of Applied Philosophy, Ethical Theory & Moral Practice, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Public Affairs Quarterly, and numerous books on philosophy and popular culture.

Scott Rogers, "Joss Whedon and the Problem of Nothing: River Tam and Existential Identity"
  • Scott Rogers is a professor of English at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, where he teaches courses primarily on Victorian literature and on television culture.

​Rachel Sharkey, “'I’m in Neuroplastic Heaven': Putting the Dollhouse in the Context of Modern Neuroscience"
  • Rachel Sharkey is a Ph.D. student at McGill University doing her Ph.D. thesis in neuroscience on the neural correlates of impulsivity in adolescents using magnetic resonance imaging techniques. She holds a Bachelor’s of Science, Honours, in Neuroscience from the University of Calgary. In addition to her research interests she is also interested in science communication and science fiction literature and television. She is an active member of several fandoms, including Joss Whedon’s.

Josefine Wälivaara, "Welcome to Buffydale: Mutual Construction of Bodies and Space in Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
  • Josefine Wälivaara obtained her Ph.D. in drama-theatre-film at the Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå University in Sweden. Her thesis, Dreams of a Subversive Future: Sexuality, (Hetero)normativity, and Queer Potential in Science Fiction Film and Television, was published in 2016 and deals with films and television series from Star Wars and Star Trek to Firefly and Torchwood. Her academic interests are normativity, queer theory, storytelling, and speculative fiction.

K. Brenna Wardell, "Actors Assemble!: The Intertextual Pleasures of the Joss Whedon Ensemble"
  • K. Brenna Wardell is an Assistant Professor of film and literature at the University of North Alabama. Her research, published in venues such as The Cine-Files, focuses on gender and sexuality, aesthetics, and issues of place/space in media and literary texts.

Franklin D. Worrell, "Negotiations after Hegemony: Buffy and Gender"
  • ​​Franklin D. Worrell is pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Tulane University and a M.S. in Computer Science at the University of New Orleans. His dissertation in Philosophy, under the direction of Alison Denham, explores the philosophy of horror through an examination of horror films. With Denham, he has co-authored papers on identity and agency in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and on agency in cases of dissociative identity disorder.