Hajer Albalawi
Hajer is a Postdoctoral Scholar on a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded team at the University of Central Florida.
William Allen
William Allen is an Associate Professor of Digital Media at Florida Southern College. His work in the Texts and Technology program had an emphasis in Digital Media at the University of Central Florida. He holds an MFA in Web Design and New Media from the Academy of Art University. His current research interests include studying changes in cinematic codes between two-dimensional and 360 cinematic spaces and the impact that has on short-term learning behavior and cognitivism. Portfolio: www.willaallen.com
Amanda Altamirano
Amanda Altamirano is a Senior Technical Writer at Hunter Douglas. Her research includes publications that discuss intersectional feminism in technical communication, human-centered computing, and user-centered design. Amanda’s dissertation was a mixed-methods research project centered on workplace bias in the software industry. To learn more about her experience in the T&T program, check out Amanda’s CAH blog post. You can connect with Amanda viaLinkedIn or Twitter @AmandaAlta3.
Camila Alvarez
Camila Alvarez is an Associate Professor at Indian River State Collage in the Corporate & Community Training Institute (CCTI). She has taught at Indian River State College since 2003. She earned her Master of Arts degree in 19th century British and American Literature from Florida Atlantic University. Students in her composition and literature courses often find themselves working on websites and using technology to enhance their learning experience. Her interests include pedagogy, digital media, gaming, learning environments, and networking learning. Her publications include “On Haunted Shores: Restriction and Resistance in Jennine Capo Crucet’s How to Leave Hialieah” (Women of Florida Fiction: Essays on 12 Sunshine State Writers, 2014) and Effective Communication. Her homepage is: Alvarez.
Anshare Antoine
I graduated in the Technical and Scientific Communication track and am a proposal coordinator for Makpar Corporation. In 2017, I received my Master’s degree at the University of Central Florida in Literary, Cultural, and Textual Studies. My research examines how African Americans create alternate online spaces on social media platforms to resist devaluation of Blackness and rhetorically represent and perform their race as first-class citizens of American society, deserving of equal rights, treatment, and legitimate recognition as other privileged races. My other research interests include Online Activism, Black Culture, Social Media Trends, Popular Culture, Gender Studies, Technical and Professional Communication, and Inclusive Interface Design.
Carissa Baker
Dr. Carissa Baker is an Assistant Professor at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida. She studies theme parks and attractions from a variety of perspectives, including their characteristics as art, business, culture, and technology. Her dissertation research was on the theme park as a narrative medium. This project earned recognition including a College Outstanding Dissertation Award and the Texts and Technology Dissertation Research Award; it also contributed to her winning the Order of Pegasus, UCF’s highest student award. Theme parks have been a subject of Dr. Baker’s research for more than two decades. She is a member of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), TEA NextGen, the TEA NextGen Committee, the TEA Academic Network, and the Themed Experience and Attractions Academic Society.
Clayton Benjamin
Clayton is an Assistant Professor of English and Digital Rhetoric in the Department of Literature and Languages at the University of Texas at Tyler. He finished his M.S. degree in Technical Writing at the University of Minnesota (UMN) in December of 2010, with a special focus on information architecture, usability, and human factors. His thesis focused on extending Marshal McLuhan’s theories of extension to online identity in order to situate incoming freshman as digital natives, and to argue for the inclusion of critical technology studies in first year composition. Additionally, he obtained a double major in Journalism and Theater from UMN in spring of 2006. Though his background is quite eclectic, a focus of identity has been consistent. His senior project for his theater degree was an instillation piece. The piece took place on the Washington Avenue Bridge at UMN and focused on messenger windows from gay male chatrooms, technological noise, and the disconnect of digital text and physical context.
PS Berge
PS Berge (they/she) is an Assistant Professor of Experimental Game Design at the University of Alberta’s Media & Technology Studies program. They are a game and media researcher studying trans play, toxic technoculutres, and the so-called unplayble. She is an award-winning game designer as well as the Director of the Discord Academic Research Community. Their work has appeared in New Media & Society, Game Studies, Feminist Media Studies, and elsewhere. Website: http://psberge.com/
Landon Berry
Landon Kyle Berry is a postdoctoral fellow at the the University of Central Florida Karen L. Smith Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, where he plans, develops, and implements faculty development programs including course innovation projects using peer review and WAC methodology, Teaching & Learning Days focused on exploring evidence-based pedagogies, and coordinating two annual conferences hosted by the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. He also develops and implements training for new faculty; develops and implements training for new graduate teaching associates; and conducts research on active and disciplinary learning spaces, the rhetorical implications of teacher pedagogical, technological, and content knowledge, and the use of emoji by college students across campus.
Rachel Braaten
Rachel is an Honors professor of humanities at Seminole State College, where she teaches courses in Humanities and Film Studies. Her research interests include film history, feminist film theory, international new wave film movements, film festival theory, and how these subjects intersect. Her current research involves recovering the life and works of female filmmakers and their contributions to feminist movements, gender equality, social justice, and the future of women in film. Rachel holds a B.A. from St. Olaf College, and an M.A. from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her recent publications include The Historical Dictionary of Hong Kong Cinema, 2020, published by Rowman and Littlefield.
Jessica Campbell
Jessica is a Senior UX Researcher at Optum. She is an experienced technical communicator, author, and multi-media manager who has published both in print and online. Her scholarly interests include: technical communication, multimodal communication and distribution, health and medical communications, and telemedicine. Publications include: Instructional Activities, Online Technologies, and Social Community in Online Graduate Student Courses (2017) and Flipping the Script: Creating Mass Change Through Social Networking Sites (2018).
Russell Carpenter
Russell Carpenter is executive director of the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity and associate professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University. He also serves as Summer Coordinator. Carpenter has published numerous collections, including Sustainable Learning Spaces, The Routledge Reader on Writing Centers and New Media, Writing Studio Pedagogy, Studio-Based Approaches for Multimodal Composition, and Engaging Millennial Faculty. He has served as President of the Southeastern Writing Center Association and Chair of the National Association of Communication Centers and also co-chaired the International Writing Centers Association Summer Institute and annual conference. As a long-standing member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, he has also served as the chapter’s president and past president. At EKU, Carpenter is a two-time recipient of the Provost’s Distinguished Service Award. In addition, he has received the National Association of Communication Centers Turner Award (2017) and Preston Award for Leadership (2015). As chair of the Southeastern Writing Center Association’s Research & Development Committee, he led efforts to design and implement the nation’s first writing center certification program. His articles have appeared in Computers and Composition, Journal of Learning Spaces, WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning, Journal of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Learning Communities Journal, and the National Teaching and Learning Forum, among others.
Robert Clarke
Robert Clarke earned his master’s degree in History from the University of Central Florida in 2014, with an emphasis in Public and Digital History. He was awarded the College of Arts and Humanities Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award in 2014 for his thesis project, “The Spatial Relationship Between Labor, Cultural Migration, and the Development of Folk Music in the American South: A Digital Visualization Project.” Clarke teaches history at UCF and his dissertation project archived the sonic environment and analyzing the relationship between aural cues and representations of place and meaning on campus.
Tatyana Claytor
Tatyana Claytor holds an MA in Professional Writing and an M.Ed. in Technology Integration. She is a high school English teacher for Florida Virtual School and has taught high school and college courses for more than eighteen years. Her research interests include: Children and YA sci-fi literature and film, publishing, and education.
Daniel Cox
Dan Cox (he/they) is an Assistant Professor of Game Design at Illinois State University. He studies and teaches digital platforms, game engines, and authoring tools. They wrote the book Dynamic Story Scripting with the ink Scripting Language (2021) and their dissertation, “Do You Want to Build with Snowman?”: Positioning Twine Story Formats Through Critical Code Study (2023), reported on the authoring tool Twine and one of its built-in story formats, Snowman. They maintain and have contributed to many open-source projects connected to extended reality and machine learning using digital authoring tools.
Bonnie Cross
I am an an English Professor at Valencia College. I received my Master of Arts degree from the University of Vermont in 2013. My research has focused on the interaction between science and literature, monsters, and storytelling in the horror genre. I am especially interested in interdisciplinary studies, especially neuroscience and literature. I have presented at several institutions such as the College English Association, Popular Culture Association, and the Victorian Institute.
Nicholas DeArmas
Nicholas DeArmas is a Visiting Instructor in the UCF English Department.
Brandy Dieterle
Brandy Dieterle is a Lecturer in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida, where she teaches and mentors undergraduate and graduate students. Her research and teaching is centered around digital rhetorics and literacies, multimodal composition, and new media studies. She’s especially interested in how these subject areas intersect with identity and gender studies as people engage in self-presentation practices.
Ray Eddy
Ray is a Lecturer in UCF’s College of Business, teaching in the Integrated Business program. His research focuses on the concept of immersion and how it influences participant experiences in entertainment activities such as video games, film/television, virtual reality, and theme parks. Before he began his T&T studies, Ray received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Duke University, follow by a 20-year career in the entertainment industry.
Sahar Eissa
Sahar Eissa is a Data Analyst, Founder & CEO of Digitacx, LLC. She received her MA in Political Communication from Cardiff University, in 2016. Her research focuses on analyzing digital media interfaces to create new social experiences for teaching and learning different fields such as civics, history, and arts. Eissa’s areas of interest include communication, design, mobile learning, games and AR/VR. She created a multimedia video for the St. Augustine Cemetery field trip while working with the Veterans Legacy Program at UCF, and now is developing a mobile app for the cemetery. In her T&T internship course, Eissa designed and developed a website for the Flickering Landscapes conference.
Christopher Foley
Chris earned his M.A. in English from Eastern Kentucky University in 2014. He has had the pleasure of learning as a writing center tutor and coordinator, community college teacher, and instructor in the UCF Department of Writing and Rhetoric. His research interests are related to [writing] pedagogy, rhetoric, and ideology. He has presented research on writing center spaces and cultures at Conference on College Composition and Communication, Southeastern Writing Center Association, and HASTAC. His current research seeks to understand how critical discourse analysis can be used to address harmful ideologies encountered in the first year writing classroom.
Delia Garcia
Delia is an Assistant Dean in the the UCF College of Arts & Humanities. She received her M.S. in Criminal Justice from the University of Central Florida in 2001. Delia’s current research interests include literacies of marginalized populations, higher education, and social justice.
Linda Garrison
Linda is currently Librarian and Digital Citizenship instructor at Canterbury School of Florida in St. Petersburg, FL. She received her MS in Library Information Studies from FSU in 2006. Her research interest is library classification systems as they affect young library users’ sense of self, with special interest in students who belong to marginalized populations. Her recent publications include “Cataloging and Gender Studies.” (Gender Issues and the Library: Case Studies of Innovative Programs and Resources, 2017) and “Lifestream Mobile Application: Navigating Transgender Healthcare in Metropolitan Orlando” (IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, 2015).
Kendra Gilbertson
Kendra Gilbertson is Director of the College of Arts and Humanities Student Advising office at the University of Central Florida. She specialized in the Rhetoric and Composition track. She earned her M.A. in Educational Leadership and graduate certificate in Professional Writing from UCF and her B.S. in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Sport Marketing & Management from Indiana University. Kendra’s research include social media, athlete activism, gender equality and women in sport. Her dissertation focuses on athlete activism in the WNBA during the 2020 season and the role of social media. She previously taught Strategies for Student Success (SLS 1501) as an adjunct instructor.
Theresa Gindlesperger
Theresa Gindlesperger earned her B.S. degree in English Language Arts Education in 1999 and her M.Ed in Educational Leadership in 2002, both from the University of Central Florida. She has served as an English teacher, a Library Media Specialist, an Instructional Coach, and a district Curriculum Specialist. She is currently a Reading Specialist at a K-12 virtual school, and teaches developmental reading and writing at Valencia College. Her research interests include the psychosocial impact of social media rhetoric on adolescents, and the outreach potential of school libraries in impoverished communities as public schools move to fully digitize curricula.
Tami Gitto-Kania
Tami Gitto is a tenured instructor of Humanities with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She earned both her BA and MA From Stony Brook University. Her research explores digitally mediated communication (DMC) and its impact on interpersonal discourse when technology is embedded. She considers users’ experiences, interface and platform choices.
Carolyn Glasshoff
Carolyn Glasshoff is a Lecturer teaching technical writing courses for the UCF English Department. Her research interests center on writing in the sciences and public understanding of science, focusing on environmentalist rhetoric and the rhetoric of health and medicine. Her current research focuses on the public rhetoric surrounding vaccination. She received an M.A. from UCF in Composition and Rhetoric, a B.A. from the University of Florida in English with a minor in mathematics, and an A.A. in pre-engineering from Pensacola Junior College.
Emily Hensley
Emily Hensley is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at UCF. She earned her M. A. in English in 2015 from Eastern Kentucky University, where she focused on digital media, writing studio pedagogy, and first-year writing. She currently teaches first-year composition at UCF where her current research focuses on best practices for teaching first-year writing students about rhetorical velocity and circulation using digital and networked media and how best to guide students through some of the difficult ethical choices they must make when writing in digital, networked spaces. A portfolio of her academic work can be found at ehensley.com.
Erika Heredia
Erika M. Heredia’s research explores how national identities are expressed in digital environments, with a special interest in narratives that build a sense of community in social media. She believes that the study of technological tools from a critical point of view provides a path toward social justice, the final purpose of all academic intervention in society. Her previous studies include a M.A. in Humanistic Studies (Tec. De Monterrey, Mex. 2014) and a B.A. in Audiovisual Communication (UBP, Arg. 2005). For more information, see www.erikamheredia.com
Amanda Hill
Amanda is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, TX.
Jasara Hines
Jasara Hines is a teacher and program coordinator at Thornwood High School in South Holland, IL. She received her B.A. in English Literature with a minor in Philosophy from New Mexico State University (2004). That same year she began teaching for Osceola County Public schools, and has been teaching in the public school system since then. In 2008, she completed her M.A. in English Literature at UCF. Her area of focus is the remediation of collective memory, memorials, and other objectives of collective memory, and her recent publications include “Collective Memory in a Prosumer Society” in Hypercultra, Cultural and Institutional Memory as (a) Means of Progress (2016). Her dissertation won the Outstanding Dissertation Award for the college of Arts and Sciences. She has been researching and creating professional development opportunities for teachers centered around technology integration in the classroom.
Ha’ani Hogan
Ha’Ani Hogan is the Development and Marketing Manager at the Downtown Arts District, where she is responsible for grants, sponsorships, event planning, and cultivating donors to support the local arts community. Hogan earned an M.A. in Arts Administration from the Savannah College of Art and Design. A strong believer in the importance of creative place-making, she applies this concept to her professional and academic work. Her research includes studying the impacts of public art and how technology can help public art creators educate communities, enhance economic development, and influence social change.
Kenton Taylor Howard
MA in English with an emphasis on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Florida Atlantic University, 2012
Taylor is a Lecturer in Games and Interactive Media at UCF. He studies video games, digital media, Writing Across the Curriculum, and critical theory. He is particularly interested in scholarship that explores connections between these areas and teaching and tries to put them into practice while teaching.
Bryce Jackson
Bryce is the IT Business Relationship Manager for UCF’s College of Arts & Humanities, College of Undergraduate Studies and Division of Teaching and Learning. His research examines code and algorithms, their social and cultural influence and power as code and communication, and the ways people interact, perceive, and perform through the mediums, applications, or platforms code produces. He co-presented at EDUCAUSE on “Developing a New Enterprise IT Organization by Starting in the Middle.” He graduated from UCF in 2014 with an M.A. in English – Technical Communication. More of his research interests and projects can be explored at brycejjackson.com.
Emily K. Johnson
Emily is an Assistant Professor in English at the University of Central Florida. She conducts research focusing on educational technology, learning games, playful/gameful learning, simulations and learning, self-regulated learning, learner motivation, and self-efficacy. Prior to this position, she served as Postdoctoral Research Associate and Coordinator of the Games Research Lab at UCF where she collaborated with faculty, staff, and students from a variety of disciplines to plan, fund, conduct, and publish a wide range of games-related research. Emily earned her Ph.D. in Texts and Technology from the University of Central Florida in 2015 after teaching middle school Language Arts for eight years. She earned her M.A. in Reading Education from the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL and her BA in English from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.
L. Corinne Jones
L. Corinne Jones is an Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She specialized in Rhetoric and Composition and she studies digital rhetoric and circulation studies. She is particularly interested using queer and intersectional feminist methodologies and methods to ethically study discourses on social media platforms and the Internet more broadly. She also has taught first year composition (ENC 1101), first year research writing (ENC 1102), writing for the technical professional (ENC 3241), and legal grammar.
Valerie Kasper
Valerie Kasper is an Assistant Professor in Language Studies and the Arts at Saint Leo University. Her interests lie at the crossroads of African American literature, journalism, and history. She is particularly fond of Hurston and Morrison and their use of men in their stories, and how the legacy of slavery and its lingering effects are passed down through these men. Dr. Kasper also has many journalistic interests, and for the past six years, she has been researching African American newspapers, focusing on the first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal. She’s used data mining tools within the digital humanities (geolocation and topic modeling) to research how the first African American newspaper used its rhetorical power to battle the inequalities of the 19th century.
Jessica Kester
Jessica Kester is a professor of English in the School of Humanities and Communication and the Quanta-Honors College at Daytona State College. She received her MA in writing from DePaul University in 2006. Her doctoral work in Texts & Technology centered on composition studies, specifically the affordances of social media in first-year writing; how students transfer their writing skills and knowledge; the politics of literate practices; and Writing about Writing pedagogy. Jessica also co-founded and coordinated a Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines Program (WAC/WID) at Daytona State College from 2013 until 2020 at Daytona State College and serves as poetry editor for the Journal of Florida Studies, a born-digital interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal about the idea and place that is Florida.
Daniel J. King
Daniel J. King is studying how to integrate serious and casual game design principles, and he has published his “Activist-Casual Game Design Framework” at the 2021 International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games toward this end. For his dissertation project, he designed an original video game in order to demonstrate the Activist-Casual Framework. Before coming to UCF, Daniel completed his Master’s Degree in Writing at Nova Southeastern University in 2015. He is a part-time student and a full-time project manager for a digital marketing company.
Mark Kretzschmar
Mark received his M.A. in English from the University of Wyoming in 2010, and joined the T&T program in 2014. Mark’s current research emphasizes games studies, particularly the intersections exploring the symbiotic relationship between gamers and designers. He studies perceptions of agency and control in video games, the commodification of video game mods, and the roles video game genres play in discussions about gamer culture, gamer perceptions of control, philosophy, and marketability.
Christine Kugelmann
Christine Kugelmann is a lecturer in Technical Communication at UCF. She graduated from the Scientific and Technical Communication track as well as taking courses in Instructional Design through the College of Education. She was formerly a full time instructor in the Humanities and Communication Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Christine received her MA degree in English Literature from the University of Toledo in 1998 and has been teaching in higher education for 19 years. Her research interests include educational interface design and the ethical implications of using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom focusing on rhetorical strategies used in privacy policies and the collection of student data.
Kirk Lundblade
Kirk Lundblade’s research focuses on historical games and the people that play them. Combining ethnographic scholarship examining digital cultures with media criticism and historiographic analysis, his research extends scholarly analysis of historical games as such into examinations of the role of history and historical concepts in contemporary communities of play. Building upon his experience as a software engineer, technical writer, and semi-professional strategy gamer, his work extends into technical examination of these games and the subject communities’ facility with blended techno-historical discourses as a novel form of public historical consciousness. His work has been published in (among others) Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, and SIGDOC. His other scholarly interests include digital cultures more broadly, along with analog war games and the politics of representing and roleplaying fascism on the tabletop. He is an Applications programmer for the RICHES project at UCF.
Dan Martin
I am currently an Associate Instructor and Writing Across the Curriculum Coordinator in the Writing and Rhetoric department at UCF where I’ve been teaching writing and rhetoric courses for the past 14 years. I primarily teach digital and multimedia writing courses and train faculty across disciplines in writing theory and pedagogy. My digital rhetoric research is particularly interested in how we make meaning in digital writing environments and from digital media, such as how misinformation and fake news are constructed in digital writing environments and how to use rhetorical literacies to combat misinformation. Recent publications include “Using Structure and Form as a Rhetorical Frame for Multimodal Composing” (Journal of Multimodal Rhetoric, 2018) Website: https://tandtprojects.cah.ucf.edu/~pmartin/DanM/index.html
Marcia Mazzarotto
Marci Altamura Mazzarotto is an Assistant Professor in the School of Business & Digital Media at Georgian Court University, a small liberal arts Catholic university in central New Jersey.
Rudy McDaniel
Rudy McDaniel is Director of the School of Visual Arts and Design and Professor of Games and Interactive Media in the Nicholson School of Communication and Media at the University of Central Florida. He previously served as Assistant Dean of Research and Technology for the College of Arts and Humanities from 2011 to 2016. His current research focuses on digital ethics, digital badging, and game-based learning. Rudy is co-author of Understanding Digital Ethics: Cases and Contexts (2020), Designing Effective Digital Badges: Applications for Learning (2019), and The Rhetorical Nature of XML: Constructing Knowledge in Networked Environments (2009). He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles, proceedings papers, and book chapters on his research and presented his work at more than 100 conferences and workshops. He is a member of the UCF Scroll and Quill Society and was named Distinguished Senior Research Fellow by the Ministry of Culture in China in 2016. He has also earned significant funding for his college and his field from the State of Florida and the National Endowment for the Humanities which has funded student research. He was the first student to defend his dissertation in Texts and Technology and graduated from the program in 2004.
Jennifer Miller
Jennifer Roth Miller, Ph.D., is a faculty member at the University of Central Florida in the Nicholson School of Communication and Media. Jennifer’s work seeks to better understand digital citizenship and social media engagement by exploring the convergence of communication, technology, philanthropy, and education in socially constructing collective views and actions for social justice. Jennifer’s work has been published in journals such as Xchanges and Enculturation: A Journal of Writing, Rhetoric, and Culture. She is also a co-author of two book chapters in edited collections; one published by Routledge and the other published by University Press of Colorado.
David Moran
David Thomas Moran’s (MFA – Emerging Media, UCF 2014) research develops an integrated data justice-transit justice methodology that analyzes inequalities embedded in public transit schedule data (General Transit Feed Specification). He has spent over a decade spanning the non-profit, government and private sectors in transmedia production and storytelling, art as social practice, community engagement, urban studies and social entrepreneurship. In 2013, David co-founded a public art collective called the Transit Interpretation Project (TrIP) with Orlando-based art curator Patrick Greene, and building from TrIP co-founded Omnimodal, a transportation tech company, with Orlando-based artist and software programmer Nathan Selikoff in 2017.
Abigail Moreshead
Abigail is a Postdoctoral Scholar at UCF. Specializing in digital humanities, her research focuses on book studies, with an emphasis on feminist media and bibliography. Her dissertation examines women illustrators of the early 20th century wood engraving revival and how their work impacts the book as a material object. Abigail is managing editor for the James Joyce Literary Supplement, social media manager and researcher for Johnson’s Dictionary Online, and has taught literature and writing for UCF’s English department. Her work has been published in Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies and Feminist Media Studies.
David Morton
David Morton was a 2016-17 Fulbright Scholar, where he conducted research on American distributors in Belgium during the interwar period at the Ghent University’s Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS). He is program director for the Flickering Landscapes Conference Series, which will host The Image of Migration at the UCF Center for Emerging Media in March, 2019. David’s dissertation is Motion Pictures at a Great Savings: The State of Florida and the Motion Picture Industry, 1908-2018.
Jack Murray
Jack is an Assistant Professor of Game Design at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Christopher C. Odom
Christopher C. Odom is a course director in the Creative Writing MFA Program at Full Sail University. In T&T, he specialized in Digital Media. His research focuses on the visual imagery of social movements that lies at the intersection of visual and multimedia culture and rhetoric & digital activism. His research and teaching interests include counterpublics, critical communications, digital activism, social movements, and visual and multimedia culture and rhetoric. Christopher teaches graduate students screenwriting, video production, and social media personal branding. A published author and graduate of the UCLA MFA Program in Film, TV and Digital Media, Christopher C. Odom is a domestic and international award-winning filmmaker and voice over artist whose work has appeared in major cities worldwide including Cannes, Berlin, Tel Aviv, New York and Los Angeles. Learn more about Christopher C. Odom at https://cv.christopherodom.com.
Elle O’Keeffe
Elle O’Keeffe is a faculty member at Rasmussen University. She teaches Strategic Management, Intro to HR, Managing a Diverse Workforce and other business courses in the School of Business.
Laura Okkema
Laura Okkema is a Lecturer at the University of Michigan LSA in Germanic Languages and Literatures.
Jesslyn Parrish
Jesslyn Parrish is a Health Communication Specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her academic background includes cultural anthropology and applied linguistics with research projects focusing on the Deaf community and Sign Language acquisition. In T&T she researched immersive experiences and blending humanities and programming. Her research focuses on digital immersion and technical communication used for informal learning experiences. Jesslyn has interned with Orlando Science Center and recently participated in a grant with Orlando Museum of Art to create an interactive timeline to be incorporated with student visits. Jesslyn was a Graduate Research Associate working in the Center for Humanities in Digital Research (CHDR) and a HASTAC Scholar. Website: https://jesslynparrish.github.io
Irene Pynn
Irene writes fantasy and light science fiction for adults, young adults, and children. Her work spans novels, plays, transmedia events, and more. Most of her work focuses on internal conflicts told through speculative metaphors: From Light to Dark is a high fantasy that features a Romeo and Juliet theme. In it, two teens from opposing worlds come together to resolve the conflicts of their ancestors. For the release of that novel, Irene also wrote and produced a transmedia event called Creepy Luny Inn’s Radio Adventure Show, aka Myth of the Seeker. This was an interactive radio drama and treasure hunt that allowed listeners to vote on the outcome of each episode. For the most part, Irene writes what she likes to read, which are character-driven stories of alternate realities. She likes to throw her characters into alternate worlds to see how they live their “normal” lives in the midst of magical or technological changes.
Sara Raffel
Sara is an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication at the University of Central Florida.
Alex Rister
Alex Rister completed the Texts and Technology program simultaneously seeking a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies. She is employed as an Assistant Professor of Communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Worldwide campus and holds the following degrees: M.A. in Communication from University of Central Florida, M.A. in English from University of North Florida, and B.A. in English from University of Florida. Her research interests include social media and hashtag activism related to feminist causes, especially human trafficking awareness. Alex served as the 2019-2020 Vice Chair of the Graduate Student Committee of NCA’s Activism and Justice Division and does volunteer work related to human trafficking awareness in the Greater Orlando community.
Elena Maria Rogalle
Elena holds an M.F.A in Creative Writing (Full Sail University, 2013), a graduate certificate in Gender Studies (University of Central Florida, 2009) and an M.A. in English (UCF 2008), and is currently a Course Director in the Media Design M.F.A. Program at Full Sail University. Her research interests focus on the intersection of the women writers of the Beat Generation’s manuscript culture and the digital archive through the lens of female affiliation, community, and collaboration. Recent presentations include the UCF English Symposium and Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities.
Joshua Roney
Josh completed his M.A. in Rhetoric & Composition at UCF in 2012. He is the Assistant Director for Research Development in the Office of Research at University of Central Florida. His research interests include technical communication, collaborative writing, and technology-supported collaboration.
Lauren Rouse
Lauren Rouse is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University in their Writing Studies department. Xir dissertation research was on representations of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in superhero television shows and corresponding fan fiction. Xe has been published in Social Media + Society, Transformative Works and Cultures, In Media Res, and Flow.
Daria Sinyagovskaya
Daria Sinyagovskaya is a Lecturer in Games and Interactive Media at UCF. She holds a MA in International Economics from Russian Foreign Trade Academy. She is the author of Easy Chinese, one of the four best-selling books on learning Mandarin Chinese in Russia, and Chinese Economic Modernization Experience. Her research interests are Chinese pedagogical practices within the Digital Humanities. She has studied topics within digital media, Chinese-language pedagogy, foreign-language learning in multilingual settings, cross-cultural communication, and Chinese history and art.
Nathan Snow
Nathan is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Utah Tech University. He is interested in film, animation, video games, and spectator theory. He is a 2012 graduate of the University of Bristol in the UK, earning a M.A. in Cinema Studies.
Francine N. Sutton
Francine is an i-Team Civic Designer with the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. She graduated from the T&T program with a concentration in Digital Media. She obtained a BA in Art and MA in Urban & Regional Planning from Jackson State University. Her dissertation research examined older adults’ user experience with mHealth applications through a three-phase mixed methods methodology. Her research interests include user experience design, popular culture, fandom studies, and video game studies. She had the opportunity to present her academic papers at several international, national, and regional popular culture conferences. To date, Francine has presented her preliminary dissertation research findings at SIGDOC ‘20 and SIGDOC ‘22.
Emily Tarvin
Emily works in Contracts and Grants at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She received her M.A. in American Studies at the University of Alabama in 2016. Currently, her research interests includes using subcultural studies to examine how YouTube audiences use the platform to develop online communities. Her research focuses on the various strategies YouTube creators use to balance economic motivations and still maintain a sense of community on their channels. She is also interested in how users and the YouTube company describe the platform as democratic and how this relates to historical representations of democracy and technology.
Patricia Thomas
Patricia is a Program Manager for Critical Infrastructure Protection in Cyber Security at the Orlando Utilities Commission. Her dissertation, “Discursive Trick Effects: How Raced and Gendered Semiotics in Industry Media Undermine Equal Representation in the Cybersecurity Workforce,” builds on the critical theory of Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes to examine how the discursive digital archives produced by industry media represent their workforce. Her approach theorizes that the semiotics of image connotation are importantly compounded in digital archives, exacerbating existing problems of just representation of gender and race. Each chapter is focused on a contemporary discursive archive and intervenes through critical counter-narrative engagement with critical social theorists and historians. These discursive archives are important examples of how cybersecurity industry media is mediating conversations surrounding equal representation in technology fields. This work has implications for how we think about and engage industry media across fields. Patricia holds a Bachelor’s in language and culture and a Master’s in American literature from the University of New Orleans as well as a Gender Studies certificate and PhD from the University of Central Florida.
Mia Tignor
Mia Tignor is the director of the library at Indian River State College. She has a M.A. in Library and Information Science from the University of South Florida. Her research interests include the intersection of librarianship and critical theory and the creation of digital humanities visualizations. Her recent publications include Focus on the Facts: A news and information literacy instructional program (Reference Librarian, 2018) and “Case Study: Press Record” (Moving beyond the wow factor: The savvy academic librarian’s guide to technological innovation, 2018, co-written with T&T student Kendra Auberry). For more information, visit www.miatignor.com.
Amy VanSchaik
Amy VanSchaik is Senior UX Designer & Researcher at the Orange County Library System. She has 15+ years of experience in design, web development, information architecture, user research, and UX engineering. She received a B.A. in Digital Arts from Stetson University in 2002, and an M.A. in Digital Media: Visual Language and Interactive Media from the University of Central Florida in 2008. Her research interests are in tangible technologies, games and play, computational crafting, experiential learning, and the creative process. She was recently accepted into the Designing for Digital Conference in Austin, Texas to present her user research methods in gathering feedback from both employees and customers with a website redesign. Website: www.amyvanschaik.com
Rachel Winter
Rachel is the Faculty Director for the Strategic Communication MA at Rollins college. She graduated with her M.A. in English from Eastern Kentucky University in 2015 where she focused on learning space design and Writing Studio Pedagogy. Her interests include multimodal writing studio studies and digital media as political and social activism. Her dissertation research focused on the creation of memes about political candidates as a form of fan activity that constitutes political participation. Rachel’s portfolio can be viewed here.
Aaron Zwintscher
Aaron Zwintscher is a Humanities Instructor at Central Maine Community College. His book, Noise Thinks the Anthropocene, is a textual experiment in noise poetics that began as his doctoral dissertation in T&T. As Aaron notes, “noise poetics is the use of noise to explain, elucidate, and evoke (akin to other poetic forms) within the textual milieu in a manner that seeks to be less determinate and more improvisational than conventional writing.” Noise Thinks the Anthropocene has been published by Punctum Books. Aaron puts his multimedia remix(ed) theories to work in his courses.