Notes on Contributors
Steve Benton
is director of the University Honors Program and an associate professor in the Department of English and Languages at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. His most recent essays on pedagogy and depictions of educators in popular fiction and film have appeared in The Journal of Popular Film and Television, The Atlantic, The Philosophy of Tim Burton, and Screen Lessons.
Naeemah Clark
is an associate professor in the School of Communications at Elon University. She teaches courses focused on the entertainment media and industry practices. Along with conducting academic scholarship, her writing has also been published by The Huffington Post, The New Republic, and The Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Kristy Liles Crawley
is a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a full-time member of the English faculty at Forsyth Technical Community College. Her teaching and research interests include feminist theory, composition theory and pedagogy, nineteenth-century American literature and culture, material rhetoric, and spatial theory. Her research on ethnography and pedagogy has appeared in Prose Studies and Teaching English in the Two-Year College.
Elizabeth Currin
is a doctoral candidate in curriculum and instruction at the University of Florida. Her research interests include practitioner inquiry, the history of education, and pop culture representations of schools. Before pursuing a doctorate, Elizabeth was a high school English teacher.
Mary M. Dalton
is professor of communication at Wake Forest University where she teaches courses in critical media studies. Her scholarly writing includes The Hollywood Curriculum: Teachers in the Movies, and she is a documentary filmmaker.
Jill Ewing Flynn
is an associate professor who teaches undergraduate methods courses and coordinates student teaching for the English Education Program at the University of Delaware. Her research and teaching interests center on critical multicultural education, primarily on how teachers can engage with students in productive discussions about race.
Chad E. Harris
is a PhD student and graduate assistant in Cultural Foundations at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In addition to critical media studies and educators in popular culture, Harris’s work delves into philosophical approaches to film and literature to offer new dimensions to what phenomenology can offer cinematic and literary experiences.
Gary Kenton
earned his BA in Special Education from Greensboro College and his Master’s Degree in Communications from Fordham University and has taught at every level from Head Start to college. In addition to his scholarly publications, Gary has also been elected to public office on three out of four tries.
Mark A. Lewis
is associate professor of literacy education at Loyola University Maryland. His scholarship examines and critiques representations of adolescence and youth in young adult and adult literature, explores the multifaceted literary competence of secondary students, and identifies effective ways to support linguistically diverse learners.
Laura R. Linder
is a retired professor of media arts. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Mass Communication. Her other publications (with Mary M. Dalton) include Teacher TV: Seventy Years of Teachers on Television (Peter Lang, 2019), Screen Lessons: What We Have Learned from Teachers in the Movies and on Television (Peter Lang, 2017), The Sitcom Reader: America Re-Viewed, Still Skewed (SUNY Press, 2016). Her first book was Public Access Television: America’s Electronic Soapbox (Praeger, 1999).
Ian Parker Renga
is assistant professor of education at Western Colorado University. His work examines the intersection of practice, identity, and community in teacher development. He has published essays exploring archetypal depictions of teachers, and recently coedited a book on education in popular film titled Teaching, Learning, and Schooling in Film: Reel Education.
Stephanie Schroeder
is Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at the Pennsylvania State University-University Park. Her research interests include democratic and citizenship education, elementary pre-service teacher education, and education activism.
Jeff Spanke
is an assistant professor of English at Ball State University where he teaches courses in introductory composition, young adult literature, and English teaching methods. His current scholarship focuses on multimodal social constructions of teachers, teaching, students, and learning. He is also interested in the intersections of vulnerability and resistance in teacher education programs, particularly in regard to the narrative and theatrical elements of the teaching profession.
Roslin Smith
Assistant Professor, is in her fifth year of teaching in the Communication Department at SUNY Fredonia NY. During this time, her creative work has been shown nationally and internationally including the UK, Italy, Egypt, South Africa and Quebec. Over the past two years, she has won three Broadcast Education Association awards, and is currently creating an historical documentary Among the Hemlocks, with financial assistance from an Artist in the Community Decentralization Grant, NY.
Andrew Wirth
is a graduate of the Master’s in Communication program at Wake Forest University.