I’m an associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Swarthmore College. Before that I was a Ph.D student in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington; before that a master’s student in Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and before that a struggling science-fiction writer and production manager at The Sun Magazine, where I still serve on the Board of Directors.

A partial list of my publications:

• More Than Meets the Eye: Special Effects and the Fantastic Transmedia Franchise. New York: NYU Press, 2018.
• “From Model Building to 3D Printing: Star Trek and Build Code Across the Analog/Digital Divide.” In The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, edited by Suzanne Scott and Melissa Click. Routledge, 2018. 114-122.
• “Transmedia Space Battles: Reference Materials and Miniatures Wargames in 1970s Star Trek Fandom.” Science Fiction Film and Television 9.3 (2016). 325-45.
• Special Effects: New Histories, Theories, Contexts (an anthology co-edited with Dan North and Michael S. Duffy). London: BFI/Palgrave, 2015.
• Transformative Works and Cultures: Special Issue on Materiality and Object-Oriented Fandom. June 2014.
• “Materializing Monsters: Aurora Models, Garage Kits, and the Object Practices of Horror Fandom.” Journal of Fandom Studies 1.1 (2013). 27-45.
• “2003: Movies, ‘Shock and Awe,’ and the Troubled Blockbuster.” American Cinema 2000-2009: Themes and Variations. Ed. Timothy Corrigan. Rutgers University Press, 2012.
• A special-effects-themed week of In Media Res, co-edited with Dan North and Michael S. Duffy. November 7-11, 2011.
• “Adapting Watchmen After 9/11.” Cinema Journal 51.1 (2011). 154-159.
• “Downloads, Copies, and Reboots: Battlestar Galactica and the Changing Terms of TV Genre.” FlowTV: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture Vol. 7 (December 2007).
• “The Migration of Forms: Bullet Time as Microgenre.” Film Criticism 32:1 (2007). 26-48.
• “Of Eye Candy and Id: The Terrors and Pleasures of Doom 3.” Videogame/Player/ Text. Eds. Barry Atkins and Tanya Krzywinska. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. 139-157.
• “Mapping the Bit Girl: Lara Croft and New Media Fandom.” The Cybercultures Reader, 2^nd Ed. Eds. David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. London: Routledge, 2007. 159-173. Reprinted from Information, Communication and Society 6:4 (2003).
• “Playing at Being: Psychoanalysis and the Avatar.” The Video Game Theory Reader. Eds. Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge, 2003. 103-127.

Random items of professional interest:

• My faculty profile.
• A writeup of my January 2012 talk on monster model kits.
• Another talk, from 2010, on Avatar and the future of cinema.

Editorial boards I’m on: