Personnel

Dr. Anna F. Peppard started her PhD at York University intending to write a dissertation about American Naturalism, but was quickly seduced by comics and never looked back. Anna’s research explores issues of representation in popular media with a focus on superheroes, gender, and sexuality. Her comics scholarship has been widely published in academic journals such as International Journal of Comic Art, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Journal of Fashion Studies, Feminist Media Histories, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and Studies in Comics as well as numerous edited collections. Her anthology Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero (University of Texas Press) won the 2021 prize for best edited collection from the Comics Studies Society. She also reviews comics studies books for the “This Year’s Work in English” bibliography from Oxford University Press and organizes the Toronto Comic Arts Festival’s academic symposium. She has served on the board of the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics (CSSC) and is a current board member of the Comics Studies Society. 

Anna is additionally proud of her public scholarship. She hosts a weekly comics podcast called “Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow!” and contributes essays and reviews to websites such as The Walrus, The Vault of Culture, Shelfdust, The Middle Spaces, ComicsXF, Women Write About Comics, and Comic Book Herald. She is passionate about public outreach and using her knowledge to educate while being educated in turn through her interactions with diverse, passionate scholarly and fan communities. 

Dr. J. Andrew Deman is a lifelong fan and scholar of comics, having received his PhD from the University of Waterloo with comprehensive specializations in graphic narrative, visual semiotics, and discourse and textual analysis. Most recently, Andrew served as the project lead for “The Claremont Run” the world’s largest academic study of Chris Claremont’s run on X-Men comics, a project that emphasized social media engagement through micro-publishing.

Andrew’s broader research is published in Supersex, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Femspec, Critical Survey of Graphic Novels, The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, American Visual Memoir After the 1970s, English Studies Forum, TRANSverse, The Middle Spaces, Sequart, Canadian Graphic (winner of the 2017 Gabrielle Roy prize), and in his book The Margins of Comics (from Nuada Press). He also served as a featured expert for the ten-part comics documentary series INK: Alter Egos Exposed, and has written for a variety of other public-facing venues on the subject of comics and co-hosted a pair of comics podcasts (“Three Panel Contrast” and “Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow”). In helping to cultivate the Canadian comics scholarship field, Andrew served as the President of the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics (CSSC).

As an educator, Andrew has taught comics courses at the University of Toronto, Wilfrid Laurier University, The University of Waterloo, Renison University College, and St. Jerome’s University where Andrew is currently on Faculty in the Department of English Language and Literature, slowly but surely cultivating their comics offerings through existing courses Andrew has designed and now teaches such as “Graphic Narrative,” “Sexuality and Sexual Well-Being in Comics,” “Manga,” and “The Study of Comics.” Andrew also serves on the Board of Governors of St. Jerome’s University. In his spare time, Andrew would describe himself as “a family man,” which he has discovered is a euphemism for “having children means you do not have any free time.” They’re pretty rad, though, so Andrew isn’t complaining.