Faculty and Staff

Barry Jason Mauer

Barry Jason Mauer, Ph.D.

  • Associate Professor
  • Email: BMauer@ucf.edu
  • Office Hours: TR, 1:30-3:00 and by appointment
  • Campus Location: TCH251C

Biography

Barry Jason Mauer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Central Florida, and served as director of the Texts and Technology doctoral program from 2016 to 2019. He researches citizen curating, which aims to bring ordinary people into the production of exhibits, both online and in public spaces, using archival materials available in museums, libraries, public history centers, and personal collections. Mauer publishes comics about delusion and denial, particularly as they affect politics and is the author of Deadly Delusions: Right-Wing Death Cult (2020) and co-author, with John Venecek, of Strategies for Conducting Literary Research (2022). He is the co-editor, with Anastasia Salter, of Reimagining the Humanities (2023). Mauer is also a songwriter and recording artist. He lives in Orlando with his wife, Claire, his two dogs, and his cat.

Education

  • Ph.D. in English (Cultural Studies) from University of Florida (1999)
  • M.A. in English (Cultural Studies) from University of Florida (1995)
  • B.A. in Film Theory and Cultural Politics from University of Minnesota (1990)

Research Interests

Film and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, Literary Theory, Memory and Monuments, Digital Humanities, Citizen Curating, Delusion and Denialism, Right-Wing Discourse.

Recent Research Activities

Film and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, Literary Theory, Memory and Monuments, Digital Humanities, Citizen Curating, Delusion and Denialism, Right-Wing Discourse

Selected Publications

Books

Television Episodes

  • Music and Found Photographs. Half-hour televised interview about my research projects and creative work.  UCF Profiles. The UCF Channel, WBCC-DT.  https://youtu.be/YvyX4Vszl14 

  • Monument to Lost Data.  Half-hour televised interview about my research project on lost data. UCF Profiles. The UCF Channel, WBCC-DT.  https://youtu.be/tuVKetm7810

     

Articles/Essays

Artwork

  • The Invisible Parameter. “Do It!” Exhibition at UCF Art Gallery. Includes work by Barry Mauer and by 10 students in his ENG 6810: “Theories of Texts and Technology” seminar. Feb. 23, 2016 – Mar. 4, 2016.    

  • “Curating the Mystory: Ideology and Invention in the Theory Classroom.” Slide presentation/Video exhibit piece introducing three student-produced mystories.  The Encounter: Baalu Girma and Zora Neale Hurston, UCF Art Gallery, Jan. 11-Feb 18.

     

Book Sections/Chapters

  • “Citizen Curation.” Reimagining the Humanities. Eds: Barry Mauer and Anastasia Salter. Parlor Press.

  • “The Cognitive Immune System: The Mind’s Ability to Dispel Pathological Beliefs.” Global Modernity in the Shadow of Pandemic: A Cross-Disciplinary Update. Eds. Hatem Akil and Simone Maddanu. Amsterdam University Press.

  • "Curating the Mystory: Ideology and Invention in the Theory Classroom," Putting Theory into Practice in the Contemporary Classroom: Theory Lessons. Becky McLaughlin. Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  • “Teaching the Repulsive Memorial.” Co-authored with John Venecek, Patricia Carlton, Marcy Galbreath, Amy Larner Giroux, and Valerie Kasper. Producing Public Memory: Museums, Memorials, and Archives as Sites for Teaching “Writing.” Eds. Jane Greer and Laurie Grobman. Routledge. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281105966_Teaching_the_Repulsive_Memorial

  • “Rigorous Infidelity: Whole Text Sampling in the Curatorial Work of Henri Langlois, Dewey Phillips, and Jean-François Lyotard.” Sampling across the Spectrum. Oxford University Press.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260187493_Rigorous_Infidelity_Whole_Text_Sampling_in_the_Curatorial_Work_of_Henri_Langlois_Dewey_Phillips_and_Jean-Francois_Lyotard
  • "Asynchronous Documentary: Buñuel’s Land Without Bread." Book chapter for Lowering the Boom: New Essays on the History, Theory and Practice of Film Sound, edited by Anthony Grajeda and Jay Beck. University of Illinois Press.
  • "Nietzsche at the Apollo: An Experiment in Clipography." Book chapter for New Media/New Methods: The Turn from Literacy to Electracy, edited by Jeff Rice and Marcel O’Gorman. Parlor Press.
  • "Proposal for a Monument to Lost Data." Book chapter for Studies In Writing, volume 17, Writing and Digital Media, edited by Luuk van Waes, Mariëlle Leijten, Christine M. Neuwirth. Elsevier Press.

Recordings

Creative Publications

Book Reviews

  • “Paul Clements, The Outsider, Art and Humour.” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, no. 37, 2021, doi:10.20415/rhiz/037.r0 http://www.rhizomes.net/issue37/mauer.html

  • "Review of Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction, by Benjamin Noys." Cultural Analysis: Volume 3.

Miscellaneous Publications

  • “What Holds Us Back From Achieving a Better Society?” UCF Forum and Huffington Post. July 13. Also broadcast as a radio piece on WUCF, July 17, 2016.    

  • “Censorship Is Not All Bad.” UCF Forum and Huffington Post. March 9, 2016. Also broadcast as a radio piece on WUCF, March 14, 2016.    
  • “The United States Could Use a ‘Therapist General’” UCF Forum and Huffington Post. November 4, 2015. Also broadcast as a radio piece on WUCF, November 8, 2015.    
  • “Rock and Roll and the Amateur Aesthetic.” Texts and Technology Blog.    

Awards

UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellowship 2024-25

MLA-EBSCO Collaboration for Information Literacy Prize 2023

For Mauer, Barry and John Venecek. Strategies for Conducting Literary

Research, 2e. Montreal: Pressbooks, 2022. 

UCF Senior Faculty Nominee for Andrew Carnegie Fellowship 2023

"Overcoming Pernicious Political Polarization with Mental Immunity

and the Existential Positioning System." Barry Mauer, PI.

UCF Champion of Undergraduate Research Award Runner Up 2023

UCF Digital Learning Course Redesign Initiative Extension 2021

Strategies for Conducting Literary Research, Barry Mauer, PI. $20,000                              

Pabst Steinmetz Foundation Arts and Wellness Innovation Award, 2020\

"Fables versus Urban Legends: Storytelling about Vaccines at the

Intersection of Ethnography and Epidemiology" Tyler Fisher, PI. $25,000

UCF College of Graduate Studies Grant  2019

Flickering Landscapes Conference. Barry Mauer, Principal Organizer, $5,000

UCF Office of Research and Commercialization Grant 2019

Flickering Landscapes Conference.. Barry Mauer, Principal Organizer, $2,000

Courses

No courses found for Fall 2026.

No courses found for Summer 2026.

Course Number Course Title Mode Date and Time Syllabus
12679 ENG3014 Theories and Tech of Lit Study Web-Based (W) Unavailable
<p>In this course, we will explore the question of how and why literary and other texts work as they do, but also we will explore and practice thinking. Intended as a survey of critical theory, this course is about how to think about and through literature. We are learning to think because thinking for ourselves is better than having other people do our thinking for us.</p><p><br></p> <p>The discourses of theory in the 20th&nbsp;century and into the 21st&nbsp;include formalist, psychological, Marxist, feminist, semiotic, structuralist, post-structuralist, gender and queer, ecocriticism, and cultural studies areas such as new historicism, postcolonialism, and multiculturalism. We will examine works of literature using each theoretical discourse as a lens through which to view and understand them. Additionally, we will take time in the middle of the semester to gain a better understanding of interpretation itself.</p>
12754 LIT3212 Research & Writing About Lit Web-Based (W) Unavailable
<b>LIT 3212</b>&nbsp;is designated as a&nbsp;<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="https://academicsuccess.ucf.edu/our/faculty/research-intensive-courses/">Research-Intensive (RI)</a>&nbsp;course.&nbsp;This course walks you through the process of conducting literary research while helping to refine your library skills. We draw from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Framework. According to the ACRL, “Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers lead to additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.” We discuss this concept more in-depth throughout the course. Your goal in the course is to produce a research paper suitable for publication in a literary studies journal. To learn the necessary practices, we follow a research project created by Jada, an English major who conducted a literary study of James Baldwin’s classic short story, “Sonny’s Blues.”

Updated: Oct 30, 2025