Co-Directors
Corey Creekmur
Corey Creekmur is the founding and general editor of the award-winning Comics Culture book series for Rutgers University Press, and is currently Second Vice President of the Comics Studies Society (leading to the role of President in 2023), which he helped launch. His publications include essays on race and underground comics.
Ana Merino
Ana Merino is a scholar and creative writer with an extensive background in comics criticism and the curation of comics exhibits: her publications on comics include El cómic hispánico (2003), Chris Ware: La secuencia circular (2005), and Diez ensayos para pensar el cómic (2017). For many years, she was closely affiliated with the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF) and the Center for Cartoon Studies. Merino also performs curatorial work; her latest project is Illustrating Spain in the U.S.
Rachel Williams
Rachel Williams teaches courses on the making of comics and is the author-artist of two recent works of graphic nonfiction, Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching (Verso, 2021) and Run Home if You Don’t Want to be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943 (Duke University Press, 2021), both centered on historical cases of racial injustice. She is Dean of the Division of Liberal Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Research Staff
Esther Claudio
Esther Claudio received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her book project, Walking the page, reframing history: Urban comics and the right to the city, analyzes how global sociopolitical dynamics manifest itself in the local use of urban space and how individuals and communities resist, challenge and redesign segregation, gentrification, and the criminalization of racial categorizations in their experience of the city. She organized the First International Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels in Spain (Universidad de Alcalá, 2011), she co-created the www.comicsgrid.com and she is proud to be part of the editorial board of Studies in Comics and CuCo: Cuadernos de Cómics.
Nicole Amato
Nicole Amato is a PhD student in the Language, Literacy, and Culture program at the University of Iowa. Prior to moving to Iowa, Nicole was a high school literature teacher for ten years, teaching in Greenville, South Carolina and Chicago, Illinois. Her research interests include young adult literature, critical youth studies, culturally sustaining and relevant pedagogy, and teacher education.
Matthew Griffin
Matt is a graduate student in Communication Studies, specializing in Media History and Culture. He is interested in popular culture fandom and its intersections with social and political issues. Matt has written articles about superhero fandom for the online publications SKTCHD and Pop Culture And Theology. He also writes the all-ages webcomic Pumpkin and the Patch (patpcomic.com).