About

Justin Wigard (“Why-Guard”) is a PhD candidate in the Department of English, where he works with and teaches popular culture, game studies, comic studies, children’s literature, and digital humanities in the literature classroom.


 

His work covers a wide range of subjects, including the Hallmark Channel’s Garage Sale Mystery film series; professional wrestling and Street Fighter; chronotopal representations of feminism in Marvel’s Jessica Jones; the visual rhetoric of dinosaurs in Calvin and Hobbes; monstrous motherhood in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline; and digital visualizations of early-Modern Mughal biographies.


 

Justin’s dissertation, Level 101: A Video Game About Video Games, focuses on utilizing, and developing, video games as learning tools within the classroom.

Education

PhD, English, MSU (2016-Present)

MA, English: CL/YA Concentration, Central Michigan University (2015)

BA, English: CL/YA Concentration, Central Michigan University (2013)

Other Publications


Book Reviews (Published)

  • Extrapolation


  • The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

    • 29.3 (2018): Stephen King’s Modern Macabre: Essays on the Later Works. by Patrick McAleer and Michael A. Perry

    • 27.2 (2016)Adventure Time & Philosophy. ed. by Nicolas Michaud



  • The Lion & The Unicorn,

    • 38.3; September 2014 (Re)Imagining the World: Children’s Literature’s Response to Changing Times. ed. by Yan Wu, Kerry Mallan, and Roderick McGillis”



  • First Opinions/Second Reactions: Purdue University;

    • May 2013 “Second Reaction: Academically Adrift in the World—Pedagogical Applications of Ichiro.”



Justin Wigard

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@wigardju

Active 10 months ago