Adam Golub, Ph.D.
Professor OF AMERICAN STUDIES
Adam Golub writes and teaches about popular culture, literature, music, monsters, and childhood in the United States. He is co-editor of Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us (McFarland, 2017) and the author of numerous essays on topics including fandom, true crime, zombies, the blues, the history of education, and 1950s film and literature. His scholarship has appeared in Film and History, American Quarterly, Crime Fiction Studies, The Journal of Transnational American Studies, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, Hybrid Pedagogy, Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, and elsewhere. He also writes fiction and teaches a course on creative work in American Studies. Professor Golub is a former high school English teacher who also worked in secondary teacher education before coming to Cal State Fullerton. His current book project is a study of the doppelgänger in American culture, from Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” to Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Jordan Peele’s Us.
He was recently interviewed by ABC News,
The Washington Post
,
Rolling Stone
(on Jeffrey Dahmer),
Rolling Stone
(on TikTok and the Idaho murders),
The Independent,
USA Today
, HowStuffWorks
, ITV Woo
, dot.LA, and CSUF News
on the topic of true crime and popular culture.
Ph.D., American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
M.A.T., English, Boston College
B.A., English, Vassar College
CONTACT
Voice: 657-278-3438
Fax: 657-278-5820
Dept: 657-278-2441
ADDRESS
Cal State University, Fullerton
American Studies
800 N. State College Blvd. GH-313
Fullerton, CA. 92831
Courses Taught
AMST 201 Introduction to American Studies 
AMST 300 Introduction to American Popular Culture
AMST 350 Seminar in Theory and Method of American Studies
AMST 401T Literature and Culture
AMST 401T Culture and Commerce of American Music
AMST 401T Adolescent America: A Cultural History and Contemporary Study of the Teenager in America
AMST 403 Creative Work in American Studies
AMST 420 Childhood and Family in American Culture
AMST 445 The Cold War and American Culture
AMST 448 American Popular Culture and the World
Course Schedule
Adam Golub is on academic leave for Fall 2023 and Spring 2024
OFFICE HOURS
M.A. Examination Fields
Consumption and Leisure
Institutions and Ideals
The National and the Global
Literature and Culture (Alternative Field)
Childhood, Youth, and Education (Alternative Field)
Creativity and Expressive Forms (Alternative Field)
Monsters and Horror (Alternative Field)
Publications
Books
Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us, edited by Adam Golub and Heather Richardson Hayton, McFarland, 2017.
Press
"Monsters in the Classroom: Teaching Can Be a Scream," CSUF News Service, August 1, 2017.
"Zombies and the Professor Who Teaches Them," Yes Weekly, June 27, 2017.
Book Chapters
"Locating Monsters: Space, Place, and Monstrous Geographies," in Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us, ed. Golub and Hayton.
"Introduction: Monstrous Pedagogies," co-authored with Heather Richardson Hayton, in Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us ed. Golub and Hayton.
Journal Articles
"Criminal Crossovers," Foreword to "American True Crime in the 21st Century Re-Examined: Critical Interventions in a National Obsession," special issue, Crime Fiction Studies 3:1 (2022): v-xiii.
Press: "True Crime and Popular Culture: A Professor Discovers Connections,
" CSUF News, June 27, 2022.
“Engaging Fan Cultures: What Students Learn When They Study Fans,"
co-authored with Ashley Loup, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 16:2 (November 2019).
"Making Context Matter: American Studies and the Connecting Imagination," The Society of Americanists Review 1:1 (Fall 2018): 113-133.
"Stomping the Undead: A Blues Theory of Zombie Culture," Quarterly Horse: A Journal of [brief] American Studies 1.3 (Spring 2017).
“Zombie Companies and Corporate Survivors,” co-authored with Carrie M. Lane, Anthropology NOW 7:2 (September 2015): 47-54.
“Solving the School Crisis in Popular Culture: Why Johnny Can’t Read Turns 60,” Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, 2.1 (April 2015): 4-20.
"All I Needed to Know About College Teaching I Learned as a High School Teacher," Hybrid Pedagogy: A Digital Journal of Learning, Teaching, and Technology, September 15, 2013.
“John Dewey vs. The Terrible Miss Dove: Frances Gray Patton’s Postwar Schoolmarm and the Cultural Work of Nostalgia,” Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy 23:1 (Spring/Summer 2012): 37-57.
"A Transnational Tale of Teenage Terror: The Blackboard Jungle in Global Perspective," Red Feather: An International Journal of Children’s Visual Culture 3:1 (March 2012): 1-10.
Reprinted in The Journal of Transnational American Studies 6:1 (2015)
“'They Turned a School Into a Jungle!': How The Blackboard Jungle Redefined the Education Crisis in Postwar America,” Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 39:1 (Spring 2009): 21-30.
“We Are What We Teach: American Studies in the K-16 Classroom,” American Quarterly 60:2 (June 2008): 443-454.
Creative Work
"The Silver Lake Bandit,"
TIMBER 12.2 (July 29, 2022).
"True Faith," Drunk Monkeys, July 12, 2021.
"Burning Down the House," Atticus Review, July 15, 2021.
"Genuine Natural Color," Linden Avenue Literary Journal 72 (May 2018).
"The Lizard," Indicia: A Journal Curating Literary Arts 2.2 (Winter/Spring 2018).
"The Pool Guy," Pulp Literature 15 (Summer 2017): 121-130.
"The Flute Case," The Bookends Review, February 17, 2017. Selected for the Best of 2017 Print Anthology.
"Downward," 101 Fiction, October 30, 2016.
"Dry Spell,"
The Sirens Call 21 (June 2015): 46-49.
Public Writing
"Creativity and American Studies," American Studies blog, February 27, 2021.
"Reading the Monster and Its Moment," Pedagogy and American Literary Studies blog, October 22, 2018.
"To Understand Us, Look at Monsters," Orange County Register, October 29, 2014.
"Teaching Childhood Through Myth and Counter-Memory," Guest post for SHCYHOME.ORG, website of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, September 9, 2013.
“Teaching American Studies as a Habit of Mind,” Encyclopedia of American Studies, ed. Simon Bronner, Online Forum 3, "Teaching American Studies: Four Perspectives," (2012).
“American Adolescent: Holden Caulfield and the Culture of Not Growing Up,”Forbes.com, January 30, 2010.
“Lessons From the Blackboard Jungle ,” Education Week, 25:4 (21 September 2005): 39-40.
Reprinted as “Misunderstood Youth,” Teacher Magazine 17:3 (1 November 2005): 40-42.
Book Reviews
Katherine Anderson Howell, ed. Fandom as Classroom Practice: A Teaching Guide , in Transformative Works and Culture, Vol. 31 (2019).
Leo Braudy, Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural World
, in American Literary History Online Reviews, Series XVI (2018).
Karen J. Renner, Evil Children in the Popular Imagination, in Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 11:2 (Spring 2018): 265-267.
Marilyn Irvin Holt, Cold War Kids: Politics and Childhood in Postwar America, 1945-1960 , in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 46:1 (Summer 2015): 136-137.
Patrick B. Sharp, Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture, in Journal of American Ethnic History 34:2 (Winter 2015): 124-125.
Scott M. Gelber, The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest, in American Studies 53:1 (2014), 215-216.
Neil Miller, Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society’s Crusade Against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil, in Journal of American History 2011 (98): 544-545.
“Solving the Dewey Problem.” Review of Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy, and John Puckett, Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Reform, H-Childhood, H-Net Reviews, December 2007.
“The OTHER Other Fifties .” Review of Alison J. Clarke, Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America, H-Amstdy, H-Net Reviews, January, 2003.
Other Scholarly Work
Awards, Grants, and Fellowships
2022 Project upGRADS, Graduate Program Grant for Admissions Improvement, CSUF
2021 Summer Grant for Faculty Support on Scholarly Productivity, CSUF
2019 Explore Core Course Development Award, CSUF
2018 Faculty Legacy Award for Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activity and Innovations in Pedagogy, CSUF
2016 Dean's Research Award for Associate Professors, CSUF
2015 Recognition of Extraordinary and Sustained Service, CSUF
2011 Teacher Scholars Award for Exceptional Teaching Effectiveness, CSUF
2010 Award for Achievement in Scholarly and Creative Activities, CSUF
2009 CSU, Special Fund for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity
2008 CSU, Special Fund for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity
2007 HSSC/Haynes Research Stipend on Los Angeles and Southern California History
2005 Freeman Asian Studies Grant, Faculty development trip to Japan
2002 Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for Research Related to Education
2001 University Continuing Fellowship, University of Texas at Austin
Invited Lectures and Public Talks
"The History and Ethics of True Crime," Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, CSUF, April 4, 2023.
Panelist, "SERIAL, True Crime, and Podcasting's Golden Age," Webinar, Penn State Center for American Literary Studies, January 20, 2023.
"Know Your Doppelganger: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Uncanny," Humanities and Social Sciences Lectures Series, California State University, October 2022.
“Zombies Are Us: The Undead and our Imagined Community,” Humanities and Social Sciences Lecture Series, California State University, Fullerton, October 2018
“Making Sense of Monsters: Pedagogy, Collaboration, Creativity,” CSUF American Studies Graduate-Faculty Colloquium, October 2015
“American Youth Culture in the 1950s: On the Road and Around the World,” Teaching American History Grant workshop, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, January 2013
“John Dewey vs. the Terrible Miss Dove: Education and Popular Culture in Postwar America,” CSUF American Studies Graduate-Faculty Colloquium, November 2011
"The American Studies Habit of Mind," Pedagogical Keynote Address, The American Studies Institute, The Lovett School, Atlanta, Georgia, June 2010
“Danger! They’re After Our Schools! Education, Popular Culture, and the Cold War,” CSUF American Studies Graduate-Faculty Colloquium, November 2008
Conference Presentations
"Seeking Doubles: Doppelgangers and the Digital Uncanny," Center for Monster Studies Festival of Monsters Conference, University of California, Santa Cruz, to be presented October 2023
"Creative Work as Equipment for Living," Northeast Modern Language Association, virtual conference, March 2021
Discussant, “The Informal Educator: The Varied Educational Functions of Twentieth Century Popular Culture, 1920-1985, History of Education Society, virtual conference, November 2020
"America's Shadow Self: The Cultural Work of the Doppelganger in Contemporary Literature and Film," Northeast Modern Language Association, Boston, April 2020
"Monsters on Screen: American Culture and the Monstrous," Long Beach Indie International Film, Media, and Music Festival, September 2016
"Teaching Comics as Literature in the University Classroom," Comic Arts Conference, Comic-Con International, San Diego, July 2016
“From Sleepy Hollow to the Shopping Mall: Space, Place, and Monster Pedagogy,” Monstrous Geographies Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, March 2015
“Solving the Education Crisis in Popular Culture: A Cultural History of Why Johnny Can’t Read,” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, Washington, D.C., March 2013
“Cultivating the American Studies Habit of Mind,” California American Studies Association, Long Beach, April 2010
Chair and comment, “Visions and Revisions: How to Build a High School American Studies Program, “American Studies Association, Albuquerque, October 2008
“’Danger! They’re After Our Schools!’: Education and Politics in Postwar Pasadena,” American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., January 2008
“Teaching the American Studies Habit of Mind,” American Studies Association, Philadelphia, October 2007
“American Studies and the Transnational Classroom,” American Studies Association, Oakland, CA, October 2006
“Secondary School Partnerships at a Small Liberal Arts College,” North Carolina Teacher Education Forum, Raleigh, September 2006
“From The Blackboard Jungle to Battle Royale: Gakkyu Hokai (“Classroom Collapse”) in Japan,” American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., November 2005
“Japan’s Blackboard Jungle: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Youth Violence,” Society for the History of Children and Youth, Milwaukee, August 2005
Chair and comment, “American Studies and Composition,” American Studies Association, Atlanta, November 2004
“Is Your School a Blackboard Jungle?": Mass Culture and Education Reform in Postwar America,” American Studies Association, Hartford, October 2003
“Excitement, then Sociology: Marketing The Blackboard Jungle in 1950s America,” American Educational Research Association, Chicago, April 2003
“Reforming the 'Soft' Curriculum: Manliness and Education in the Cold War,” American Studies Association, Houston, November 2002
“The Blues as Matrix: Using the Blues to Teach Writing in the Computer Classroom,” Computers and Writing, Fort Worth, TX, May 2000
“Pullman Lessons: Railroads, Race, and Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” American Studies Association, Montreal, October 1999
“Everybody's Protest Song: Gender Erasure in Invisible Man and Louis Armstrong's 'Black and Blue',” Northeast Modern Language Association, Baltimore, April 1998
Student Mentoring
Faculty Sponsor, Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Program, CSUF, Awarded to Corrigan Vaughan, 2012-2013
MA Thesis Committees
Aisha Monks-Husain, “Processes of Belonging: Immigrant Identity and the Coming-of-Age Narrative in Ramy and Never Have I Ever," Fall 2021
Christina Brown, "Shaping the Story: The Poetry, Television, and Dance of the #MeToo Movement," Spring 2020 (CHAIR)
Susan Mitchell, “The Shadows of Assimilation: Narratives and Legacies of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, 1879-1918,” Summer 2017
Sukeinah Kassir, "Missions in Miniature: Cultural Constructions of California's Mission Past," Summer 2014 (CHAIR)
Ekaterina Kuzmina, "Russians in Post-Cold War American Films: Still a Foe or a Friend-to-Be? Looking for a Cultural Reset," Spring 2014
Yvonne England, "A Punk Practice: The Development of Punk Political Activism, 1974-2000," Spring 2013 (CHAIR)
Ian Barraza, "Lend Me Your Ears: Attending to Deaf Culture and the Maneuverability of Identity," Spring 2013. *Winner of CSUF 2012 Giles T. Brown Outstanding Thesis Award
Jason Cannon, "George Orwell's Animal Farm in the Post-Soviet Union Era," Spring 2012
Matt Glassman, "The Ball Don't Lie: Cultural Tension and the Commodification of Hip-Hop Authenticity in the 1990s NBA," Spring 2010
https://www.everydayfictions.com
Adam Golub, Ph.D.
Professor and Graduate Advisor
Adam Golub writes and teaches about popular culture, literature, music, monsters, and childhood in the United States. He is co-editor of Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us (McFarland, 2017) and the author of numerous essays on topics including fandom, zombies, true crime, the blues, and 1950s film and literature. His scholarship has appeared in Film and History, American Quarterly, The Journal of Transnational American Studies, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, and elsewhere. He also writes fiction and is interested in creative work in American Studies. His current book project is a study of the doppelgänger in American culture, from Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” to Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Jordan Peele’s Us.
Degrees
Ph.D., American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
M.A.T., English, Boston College
B.A., English, Vassar College
Courses Regularly Taught
AMST 201 Introduction to American Studies
AMST 300 Introduction to American Popular Culture
AMST 350 Seminar in Theory and Method of American Studies
AMST 401T Literature and Culture
AMST 401T Culture and Commerce of American Music
AMST 401T Adolescent America: A Cultural History and Contemporary Study of the Teenager in America
AMST 403 Creative Work in American Studies
AMST 420 Childhood and Family in American Culture
AMST 428 American Monsters
AMST 445 The Cold War and American Culture
AMST 448 American Popular Culture and the World
AMST 501 Theory and Methods
AMST 502 Theoretical Approaches to Studying Popular Culture
AMST 596 American Studies Teaching Tutorial
Publications
Books
Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us, edited by Adam Golub and Heather Richardson Hayton, McFarland, 2017.
Press
"Monsters in the Classroom: Teaching Can Be a Scream
," CSUF News Service, August 1, 2017.
"Zombies and the Professor Who Teaches Them," Yes Weekly, June 27, 2017.
Book Chapters
"Locating Monsters: Space, Place, and Monstrous Geographies," in Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us, ed. Golub and Hayton.
"Introduction: Monstrous Pedagogies," co-authored with Heather Richardson Hayton, in Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us ed. Golub and Hayton.
Journal Articles
"Criminal Crossovers," Foreword to "Making a Murderer: True Crime in Contemporary American Popular Culture," Crime Fiction Studies, forthcoming.
“"Engaging Fan Cultures: What Students Learn When They Study Fans"
,” co-authored with Ashley Loup, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 16:2 (November 2019).
"Making Context Matter: American Studies and the Connecting Imagination
," The Society of Americanists Review 1:1 (Fall 2018): 113-133.
"Stomping the Undead: A Blues Theory of Zombie Culture
," Quarterly Horse: A Journal of [brief] American Studies 1.3 (Spring 2017).
“Zombie Companies and Corporate Survivors
,” co-authored with Carrie M. Lane, Anthropology NOW 7:2 (September 2015): 47-54.
“Solving the School Crisis in Popular Culture: Why Johnny Can’t Read Turns 60,”Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, 2.1 (April 2015): 4-20.
"All I Needed to Know About College Teaching I Learned as a High School Teacher
,"Hybrid Pedagogy: A Digital Journal of Learning, Teaching, and Technology, September 15, 2013.
“John Dewey vs. The Terrible Miss Dove: Frances Gray Patton’s Postwar Schoolmarm and the Cultural Work of Nostalgia,” Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy 23:1 (Spring/Summer 2012): 37-57.
"A Transnational Tale of Teenage Terror: The Blackboard Jungle in Global Perspective,"Red Feather: An International Journal of Children’s Visual Culture 3:1 (March 2012): 1-10.
Reprinted in
The Journal of Transnational American Studies
6:1 (2015)
“'They Turned a School Into a Jungle!': How The Blackboard Jungle Redefined the Education Crisis in Postwar America,” Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 39:1 (Spring 2009): 21-30.
“We Are What We Teach: American Studies in the K-16 Classroom,” American Quarterly 60:2 (June 2008): 443-454.
Creative Work
"True Faith
," Drunk Monkeys, July 12, 2021.
"Burning Down the House
," Atticus Review, July 15, 2021.
"Genuine Natural Color
," Linden Avenue Literary Journal 72 (May 2018).
"The Lizard
," Indicia: A Journal Curating Literary Arts 2.2 (Winter/Spring 2018).
"The Pool Guy," Pulp Literature 15 (Summer 2017): 121-130.
"The Flute Case
," The Bookends Review, February 17, 2017. Selected for the Best of 2017 Print Anthology.
"Downward
," 101 Fiction, October 30, 2016.
"Dry Spell
," The Sirens Call 21 (June 2015): 46-49.
Public Writing
"Creativity and American Studies
," American Studies blog, February 27, 2021.
"Reading the Monster and Its Moment
," Pedagogy and American Literary Studies blog, October 22, 2018.
"To Understand Us, Look at Monsters
," Orange County Register, October 29, 2014.
"Teaching Childhood Through Myth and Counter-Memory," Guest post for SHCYHOME.ORG, website of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, September 9, 2013.
“Teaching American Studies as a Habit of Mind
,” Encyclopedia of American Studies, ed. Simon Bronner, Online Forum 3, "Teaching American Studies: Four Perspectives," (2012).
“American Adolescent: Holden Caulfield and the Culture of Not Growing Up
,”Forbes.com, January 30, 2010.
“Lessons From the Blackboard Jungle
,” Education Week, 25:4 (21 September 2005): 39-40.
Reprinted as “Misunderstood Youth,” Teacher Magazine 17:3 (1 November 2005): 40-42.
Book Reviews
Katherine Anderson Howell, ed. Fandom as Classroom Practice: A Teaching Guide , in Transformative Works and Culture, Vol. 31 (2019).
Leo Braudy, Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural World
, in American Literary History Online Reviews, Series XVI (2018).
Karen J. Renner, Evil Children in the Popular Imagination, in Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 11:2 (Spring 2018): 265-267.
Marilyn Irvin Holt, Cold War Kids: Politics and Childhood in Postwar America, 1945-1960
, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 46:1 (Summer 2015): 136-137.
Patrick B. Sharp, Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture, in Journal of American Ethnic History 34:2 (Winter 2015): 124-125.
Scott M. Gelber, The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest
, in American Studies 53:1 (2014), 215-216.
Neil Miller, Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society’s Crusade Against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil, in Journal of American History 2011 (98): 544-545.
“Solving the Dewey Problem
.” Review of Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy, and John Puckett, Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Reform, H-Childhood, H-Net Reviews, December 2007.
“The OTHER Other Fifties
.” Review of Alison J. Clarke, Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America, H-Amstdy, H-Net Reviews, January, 2003.
Other Scholarly Work
Awards, Grants, and Fellowships
2021 Summer Grant for Faculty Support on Scholarly Productivity, CSUF
2019 Explore Core Course Development Award, CSUF
2018 Faculty Legacy Award for Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activity and Innovations in Pedagogy, CSUF
2016 Dean's Research Award for Associate Professors, CSUF
2015 Recognition of Extraordinary and Sustained Service, CSUF
2011 Teacher Scholars Award for Exceptional Teaching Effectiveness, CSUF
2010 Award for Achievement in Scholarly and Creative Activities, CSUF
2009 CSU, Special Fund for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity
2008 CSU, Special Fund for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity
2007 HSSC/Haynes Research Stipend on Los Angeles and Southern California History
2005 Freeman Asian Studies Grant, Faculty development trip to Japan
2002 Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for Research Related to Education
2001 University Continuing Fellowship, University of Texas at Austin
Invited Lectures and Public Talks
“Zombies Are Us: The Undead and our Imagined Community,” Humanities and Social Sciences Lecture Series, California State University, Fullerton, October 2018
“Making Sense of Monsters: Pedagogy, Collaboration, Creativity,” CSUF American Studies Graduate-Faculty Colloquium, October 2015
“American Youth Culture in the 1950s: On the Road and Around the World,” Teaching American History Grant workshop, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, January 2013
“John Dewey vs. the Terrible Miss Dove: Education and Popular Culture in Postwar America,” CSUF American Studies Graduate-Faculty Colloquium, November 2011
"The American Studies Habit of Mind," Pedagogical Keynote Address, The American Studies Institute, The Lovett School, Atlanta, Georgia, June 2010
“Danger! They’re After Our Schools! Education, Popular Culture, and the Cold War,” CSUF American Studies Graduate-Faculty Colloquium, November 2008
Conference Presentations
"Creative Work as Equipment for Living," Northeast Modern Language Association, virtual conference, March 2021
Discussant, “The Informal Educator: The Varied Educational Functions of Twentieth Century Popular Culture, 1920-1985, History of Education Society, virtual conference, November 2020
"America's Shadow Self: The Cultural Work of the Doppelganger in Contemporary Literature and Film," Northeast Modern Language Association, Boston, April 2020
"Monsters on Screen: American Culture and the Monstrous," Long Beach Indie International Film, Media, and Music Festival, September 2016
"Teaching Comics as Literature in the University Classroom," Comic Arts Conference, Comic-Con International, San Diego, July 2016
“From Sleepy Hollow to the Shopping Mall: Space, Place, and Monster Pedagogy,” Monstrous Geographies Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, March 2015
“Solving the Education Crisis in Popular Culture: A Cultural History of Why Johnny Can’t Read,” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, Washington, D.C., March 2013
“Cultivating the American Studies Habit of Mind,” California American Studies Association, Long Beach, April 2010
Chair and comment, “Visions and Revisions: How to Build a High School American Studies Program, “American Studies Association, Albuquerque, October 2008
“’Danger! They’re After Our Schools!’: Education and Politics in Postwar Pasadena,” American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., January 2008
“Teaching the American Studies Habit of Mind,” American Studies Association, Philadelphia, October 2007
“American Studies and the Transnational Classroom,” American Studies Association, Oakland, CA, October 2006
“Secondary School Partnerships at a Small Liberal Arts College,” North Carolina Teacher Education Forum, Raleigh, September 2006
“From The Blackboard Jungle to Battle Royale: Gakkyu Hokai (“Classroom Collapse”) in Japan,” American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., November 2005
“Japan’s Blackboard Jungle: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Youth Violence,” Society for the History of Children and Youth, Milwaukee, August 2005
Chair and comment, “American Studies and Composition,” American Studies Association, Atlanta, November 2004
“Is Your School a Blackboard Jungle?": Mass Culture and Education Reform in Postwar America,” American Studies Association, Hartford, October 2003
“Excitement, then Sociology: Marketing The Blackboard Jungle in 1950s America,” American Educational Research Association, Chicago, April 2003
“Reforming the 'Soft' Curriculum: Manliness and Education in the Cold War,” American Studies Association, Houston, November 2002
“The Blues as Matrix: Using the Blues to Teach Writing in the Computer Classroom,” Computers and Writing, Fort Worth, TX, May 2000
“Pullman Lessons: Railroads, Race, and Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” American Studies Association, Montreal, October 1999
“Everybody's Protest Song: Gender Erasure in Invisible Man and Louis Armstrong's 'Black and Blue',” Northeast Modern Language Association, Baltimore, April 1998
Student Mentoring
Faculty Sponsor, Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Program, CSUF, Awarded to Corrigan Vaughan, 2012-2013
MA Thesis Committees
Christina Brown, "Shaping the Story: The Poetry, Television, and Dance of the #MeToo Movement," completed Spring 2020 (CHAIR)
Susan Mitchell, “The Shadows of Assimilation: Narratives and Legacies of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, 1879-1918,” completed Summer 2017
Sukeinah Kassir, "Missions in Miniature: Cultural Constructions of California's Mission Past," completed Summer 2014 (CHAIR)
Ekaterina Kuzmina, "Russians in Post-Cold War American Films: Still a Foe or a Friend-to-Be? Looking for a Cultural Reset," completed Spring 2014
Yvonne England, "A Punk Practice: The Development of Punk Political Activism, 1974-2000," completed Spring 2013 (CHAIR)
Ian Barraza, "Lend Me Your Ears: Attending to Deaf Culture and the Maneuverability of Identity," completed Spring 2013. *Winner of CSUF 2012 Giles T. Brown Outstanding Thesis Award
Jason Cannon, "George Orwell's Animal Farm in the Post-Soviet Union Era," completed Spring 2012
Matt Glassman, "The Ball Don't Lie: Cultural Tension and the Commodification of Hip-Hop Authenticity in the 1990s NBA," completed Spring 2010
MA Comprehensive Exam
I prepare students in the following areas: Institutions and Ideals; Consumption and Leisure; The National and the Global. Alternative Fields: Literature and Culture; Creativity and Expressive Forms; Monsters and Horror
