Justin Wigard

Spring 2025 Courses:

• ENGL 231: Literature and Social Issues
  • Course theme: Games studies
• ENGL 415: Seminar in literature
  • US comics and graphic novels

Fall 2024 courses: 

• ENGL 231: Literature and Social Issues
  • Course theme: Graphic Medicine & Graphic Memoirs
• ENGL 428: Digital Humanities
  • Course theme: Literary Mapping, Text Analysis, Wikidata, Digitization, and LLMs

RECENT PUBLICATIONS BELOW:

***Please feel free to email me for PDF copies of any publication below, or any listed in my CV! Happy to share widely. 

PUBLICATIONS – PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS

““Time is Our Only Ally!”: Indigenous Heroism and Native Slipstream in Turok, Son of Stone,” Heroism Science: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 16.

“Gamified Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Play: The Jurassic Park Ludo Mix.” Cinergie: Il Cinema e le altre Arti, 12(24), 53–70. 2023. 

“Visual Afrofuturism and Dieselfunk in the works of Tim Fielder.” Third Stone Journal vol. 3, 2023. 

“Understanding Peanuts and Schulzian Symmetry: Panel Detection, Caption Detection, and Gag Panels in 17,897 Comic Strips Through Distant Viewing.” Written with Taylor Arnold and Lauren Tilton. Journal of Cultural Analytics, vol. 8, no. 1, Sept. 2023.

“Automatic Identification and Classification of Portraits in a Corpus of Historical Photographs." Written with Taylor Arnold and Lauren Tilton. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 2022. 

PUBLICATIONS – BOOK CHAPTERS AND ESSAYS

“Ecofuturism in Subnautica.” The Deep: A Companion, edited by Simon Bacon. Peter Lang and Oxford, 2023. 

“Pulp Heroism.” In Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies, edited by Scott Allison, James Beggan, and Al Goethals. Springer, 2023.

“Twine as a Digital Community Engagement Tool.” in Making Sense of Digital Humanities: Transformations and Interventions in Technocultures, edited by Julian C. Chambliss and Ellen Moll, MSU Libraries. 2022. 

“Kwame Alexander.” In Dictionary Literary Biography 391: Young Adult Novelists, Second Series, edited by Anne Hiebert Alton, Gale. 2022.

“John Rowe Townsend.” In Dictionary Literary Biography 389: Young Adult Novelists, First Series, edited by Anne Hiebert Alton, Gale. 2022.

PUBLICATIONS – PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

“Scars Prove You Lived: On Stephen Graham Jones’s 'The Angel of Indian Lake.’" Los Angeles Review of Books, May 11, 2024. 

“The Final Girl Returns Home: On Stephen Graham Jones’s ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 18, 2023. 

“The First Found Footage Horror TTRPG: An Interview with John ‘Hambone’ McGuire and George ‘Geo’ Collazo, Creators of The Devil in New Jersey.” HorrorHomeroom, no. 7, 2023. 

“‘They Know It Could Happen To Anyone!’: The Promise Of Nuclear Holocaust And Vaccination Fallout In The Werewolf (1956).” Written with Zack Kruse. Horror Homeroom, no. 6, 2022. 

“Ludocomics: Play and Interactivity in Comics, Games, and You Are Deadpool (2018)” Vault of Culture. 2021. 

Ph.D, English, Michigan State University, 2022

• Dissertation: Level 101: A Video Game About Video Games
• Co-Chaired by Dr. Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Dr. Elizabeth LaPensée
• Dissertation abstract and video: https://justinwigard.com/level101/

Graduate Certificates:

• Digital Humanities
• Serious Games Design and Studies
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Community Engagement

M.A, English, Central Michigan University, 2015

• Concentration: Children’s and Young Adult Literature 
• Thesis: “‘The Night the Heroes Fell’: Bakhtinian Chronotopicity, American Ideology, and Post-9/11 Superheroism in Mark Millar’s Old Man Logan”  

B.S., English, Central Michigan University, 2013

• Concentration: Children’s and Young Adult Literature
• Centralis Honors Scholar

Description:

Since its inception in 1992, the Sci-Fi Channel (later rebranded as SYFY) has aired more than 500 network-produced or commissioned films. Campy and prolific, the network churned out one low-budget film after another, finally finding its zenith in the 2013 release of Sharknado. With unpretentious charm and a hearty helping of commodified nostalgia, the Sharknado franchise briefly ruled the cultural consciousness and temporarily transformed SYFY’s original films from cult fringe to appointment television. Naturally, the network followed up with a steady stream of sequels and spin-offs, including Lavalantula and its sequel, 2 Lava 2 Lantula!

This collection of essays is the first to devote critical attention to SYFY’s original film canon, both pre- and post-Sharknado. In addition to unpacking the cultural, historical and critical underpinnings of the monsters at the heart of SYFY’s classic creature features, the contributors offer a variety of approaches to understanding and interrogating these films within the broader contexts of ecocriticism, monster theory, post-9/11 criticism, and neocolonialism. Providing a further entry point for future scholarship, an appendix details a thorough filmography of SYFY’s original films from 1992 to 2022.

Link: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/Attack-of-the-New-B-Movies/