President – Marissa Zerangue
Marissa A. Zerangue (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in Literary Studies at the University of North Texas whose scholarly interests meet at the intersections of gender, race, and crime in American literature. Marissa received her M.A. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2019 and her thesis explored domestic noir in contemporary fiction, focusing specifically on the work of Gillian Flynn. She recently published a book chapter titled “‘From the Wrong Side of the Tracks’: Ethan Brown’s Murder On The Bayou and the Invisibilization of the Jeff Davis 8” for the edited collection Voicing the Less Dead to be published by Rowman & Littlefield at Lexington Books. Marissa’s dissertation will examine the less dead through true crime and crime noir across various media, including fiction, film, graphic narrative, podcasts, and other emerging genres. Over the years, Marissa has presented papers at the Comics Studies Society Conference that speak to her interest in consuming crime in comic form through the graphic narrative.
Vice President – William Norris
William Norris (He/Him) is a PhD student at University of Georgia whose research interests lie in the understanding of [super]human mythology through the lens of gender, race, and social/civic philosophy. He received his MA in English from Florida Atlantic University and wrote his thesis on the reduplication misogyny in Wonder Woman’s iconography. He’s received several commendations for his teaching, including Adjunct of the Year from Georgia Military College. His doctoral thesis will focus on the representation of women and femininity in post-apocalyptic settings when cast as the heroine and the way in which authors approach “breaking” the gender binary and “redefining” gender roles.
Secretary Treasurer – Gabrielle Lyle
My name is Gabrielle Lyle and I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. I just received my PhD in History from Texas A&M University. My dissertation, “B’nqi Borderlands: The Development of Jewish Communities in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands in the Twentieth Century”, examines the growth of Jewry in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona and places those communities in the context of the wider Jewish world. I have received funding for this work from the Arizona Historical Society, Texas Jewish Historical Society, Southern Jewish Historical Society, and the New Mexico History Museum.
In addition to this work, I have become increasingly involved in Comic Studies. I have presented on representations of Latino/a religion in comics and graphic novels and the utilization of graphic narratives in history classes. I am especially interested in the Legion of Super-Heroes and how the DC team is reflective of changing politics surrounding race, gender, and sexuality since its introduction in 1958. I am really excited to serve as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Graduate Student Caucus this year!!
Member-at-Large – Nicole Huff
Nicole Huff is a PhD candidate in the English department at Michigan State University. She received her bachelor’s from Kalamazoo College and her master’s from DePaul University. She is the co-lead for Michigan State University’s Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop and co-host of the Graphic Possibilities Podcast. This research workshop and podcast look at comics through two intersecting lenses— critical inquiry and comics pedagogy. Nicole also works as a Graduate Assistant for the Humanities Commons. Her current research centers on Afrofuturism, gender and sexuality, pop culture with a focus on Black women in horror and fantasy, and Digital Humanities methods.
Member-at-Large – Morgan Podraza
Morgan Podraza (she/her) teaches, researches, and writes about popular culture as a PhD candidate at Ohio State University. She also serves as a Member-at-Large for the Graduate Student Caucus of the Comics Studies Society and as the editorial assistant for Studies in Comics. Her current project, Playing with Comics, explores how comics encourage us to play with images and narratives and how the resulting experiences shape the stories we tell about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. Playing with Comics is exemplary of her larger work on the relationship between play and visual media, which ranges from paper-doll sets and scrapbooks to video games and film. Her writing can be found online on Women Write About Comics and The Middle Spaces as well as in print in Horror Studies and The Routledge Companion to the British and North American Literary Magazine.
Social Media Specialist – Sam Ceballos
Samantha Ceballos is an English Literature PhD student at The University of Texas at Austin. Sam served as the GSC Member-at-Large from Fall 2022-Spring 2024 before transitioning the Social Media Specialist. While Member-at-Large, she organized professional development events for GSC Members. She received her MA in Literature, Creative Writing and Social Justice from Our Lady of the Lake University, where her focus was on poetry. Her current research looks at Latina superheroes in comics books and young adult literature. As a PhD student, she taught The Rhetoric of Comic Books which focuses on superhero comics and what they can teach us about the world around us. Along with teaching, she works at the Latinx Pop Lab as the Graduate Assistant. She also serves as co-editor for the comics section and co-editor for the popcast section of the Latinx Pop Magazine.
Web Editor – Austin Kemp
I (they/them) am a PhD student in the English Department at Northeastern University where I study queer utopian forms in comics within the archives of the American comic book superhero genre. My broader work, in terms of dissertation aspirations, hopes to situate the American superheroic form as a nexus that facilitates and draws together ideas from both queer theory and disability studies. Before beginning my PhD, I earned my M.A. at Brandeis University where I published my first work, a Master’s Thesis titled “‘No Evil Shall Escape My Sight’: The Comic Book Industry & Social Relevance in the 1970s,” a semiotically-inclined analysis of Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard-Traveling Heroes that sought to entangle ideas of national identity and Barthean mythology with comics historiography and (super)iconography.
Additionally, I’ve been the Web Editor for the Graduate Student Caucus since 2022. In that time I’ve facilitated the creation of our current website and maintained said site. Beyond academics and the professional, I enjoy spending time with my partner and our young son while surrounded by our two tuxedo cats.
