Personnel

PROJECT LEAD:

Dr. J. Andrew Deman is an Eisner Award-Winning 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. 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 monographs The Margins of Comics (from Nuada Press), The Claremont Run (from the University of Texas Press), and Chris Claremont (from the University of Mississippi 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”) whilst currently hosting “The Sexuality and Gender in Manga” podcast. 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 an Associate Professor 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 enjoys playing Marvel Rivals with his children and partner despite holding back their team’s potential significantly with his wildly pathetic play but at least he’ll play tank.

PROJECT MANAGER:

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, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, 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 is a former organizer of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival’s academic symposium and has served on the boards of the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics (CSSC) and the Comics Studies Society (CSS). She also reviews comics studies books for the “This Year’s Work in English” bibliography from Oxford University Press. 

Anna is additionally proud of her public scholarship. She previously hosted a weekly comics podcast called “Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow!” which received an honorable mention for the Gilbert Seldes Prize for Public Scholarship from the Comics Studies Society, and regularly 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.

Among her current projects is a book about Marvel’s She-Hulk (currently under contrast with University Press of Mississippi) and an academic anthology, co-edited with Dru Jeffries, called Small Screen Supers: Essays on Superhero Television.

UNDERGRADUATE ASSISTANT:

Mavis Lo is a 2nd year student studying Global Business and Digital Arts while minoring in Entrepreneurship. As a part of Sequential Scholars, she helps with content creation, scheduling as well as some research and writing. She has always been obsessed with comics. Growing up, she always stole her parents’ magazines and newspapers, not to read articles but to instantly flip them over to read the mini comic strips. She loves this project as she can share her appreciation for the deeper messages, themes, and details in comics to a wider audience. She hopes that everyone can see comics for what they truly are – pieces of literature and art interwoven together, not shallow, naive, entertainment. When she is not deep into video editing, she is undertaking one of her (way too many) hobbies.