Research

On this page, you can find my published peer-review work, reviews, public-facing work, and digital humanities work.

Published Peer-Reviewed Work

***If you do not have access to any of these pieces and would like them, please just let me know!

“Disney Does Disney: Re-Releasing, Remaking, and Retelling Animated Films for a New Generation.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 50, no. 3, 2022, pp. 98-111, doi:10.1080/01956051.2022.2094868.

  • Building from Helena Hammond’s discussion of Disney’s legacy films, there are three kinds of Disney legacy films designed specifically around Disney’s animated classics: legacy re-releases when classic animated films are brought “out of the vault”; legacy remakes which fairly faithfully remake the original animated classics with the story and plot more or less intact; and legacy retellings which draw on animated classics to tell a completely new story, often by focusing on a different perspective or continuing the story beyond the animated classic. These three types of legacy film venerate the Disney company and their catalog in three distinct ways: the re-releases make these films seem like a treasure worth hoarding; the remakes use new technology to give the old films new life, making the original text seem both new and yet always familiar; and the retellings work to show how Disney has supposedly grown as a company, both venerating the original texts and intentionally pointing to their flaws in order to make Disney seem even better today. All three tactics work in concert to bring Disney’s past to the present in order to secure their future amidst technological and cultural changes.

“To Act Like a Kid or Not to Act Like a Kid: Disneybounding in the Parks.” Fan Phenomena: Disney, edited by Sabrina Mittermeier, Intellect Books. Forthcoming.

  • In this chapter, I examine the curious case of Disneybounding in the Disney parks, in which Guests choose clothes that evoke certain characters from the Disney canon. In my own Disneybounding, I found that Guests and Cast Members alike went out of their way to engage with me more. I argue that this reaction to Disneybounding, also noted by scholars such as Nettie A. Brock, Victoria Pettersen Lantz, and Rebecca Williams, is due to the particular theme at the heart of Disney’s theme parks: acting like a kid. While the Disney parks are often viewed and marketed as a child’s favorite get-away, ‘the ratio of adults to children who visit the parks is estimated at 4:1’ (Wasko 2001: 185), ‘a significant proportion of’ whom ‘are adults unaccompanied by children’ (Buckingham 1997: 286). Yet, as I will demonstrate, the Disney parks encourage guests of all ages to act like kids. Disneybounding, then, signals a guest’s willingness to engage in that theme, an engagement that Cast Members and guests alike can then choose to interact with.

“A Tale of Two Mothers: Recombining Villainy and Motherhood in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019).” Gender and Female Villains in 21st Century Fairy Tale Narratives: From Evil Queens to Wicked Witches, edited by Natalie Le Clue and Janelle Vermaak-Griessel, Emerald Publishing, 2022, pp. 35-46.

  • To study how twenty-first-century fairy-tale retellings recombine villainy and motherhood, this chapter analyzes two mother figures in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019): Aurora’s godmother, Maleficent, and Aurora’s soon-to-be mother-in-law, Queen Ingrith. I argue that Mistress of Evil attempts and fails to trouble the Good/Terrible Mother binary, ultimately reconfirming traditional notions of the Good Mother, by juxtaposing two mother villain characters. Ingrith first appears to be the epitome of the Good Mother, but the film quickly reveals that she is actually the stereotypical evil mother-in-law who uses the Good Mother image to mask her villainy. By exposing Ingrith’s lie, the film debases the myth of perfect motherhood, suggesting that the image of the “Good Mother” is only used to vilify other women in order to control people, but it also uses the Good Mother image to highlight how Terrible Ingrith is. Maleficent, on the other hand, vacillates between twenty-first-century images of the Terrible and Good Mother, specifically the aberrant and supermother. Rather than balancing these images and depicting a more nuanced motherhood, the film switches Maleficent completely between these two extremes, making her seem more villainous when she is aberrant and more motherly when she steps into the role of supermother. Whereas the representation of Ingrith highlights the lie of the Good Mother, Maleficent is forced into becoming a variation of that image. I argue that while Mistress of Evil attempts to reveal the pernicious nature of the Good Mother myth, it ultimately reconfirms it for a new generation of women.

“Who Gets to Be on the Bus?: Tracing Conceptions of Race in and around The Magic School Bus from 1986 to 2018.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 45, no. 3, 2021, pp. 274-290, doi:10.1353/uni.2021.0024.

  • This article places MSB within the robust conversations around diversity in children’s literature by examining how the MSB book series and its two adaptations depict racial diversity. Because both picture books and animation rely on the visual depiction of its characters, their representation of race exists at this intersection of sociopolitical difference and the human body, which these media often blend together through the use of their form. Analysis of racial diversity for these media can thus focus on the thematic and cultural trends surrounding characters of color and the visual codes used to design such characters. Tracing how three versions of MSB have approached this connection between race and character design reveals that Cole’s and Degen’s original books engage in a multicultural project that is situated firmly in Whiteness, simultaneously normalizing people of color in STEM fields and erasing difference. Although the PBS series attempts to individualize diversity by more clearly developing characters of color and resisting stereotypes, it is still mired in Whiteness. Finally, the Netflix series marries these two projects, furthering the goals of individualization and specifying race as in the PBS series but also nearly eradicating visual diversity as in the books. Consequently, the newest adaptation succumbs to the same problems as the original book series because Whiteness so thoroughly saturates the creation and framing of all three of MSB’s iterations.  A close examination reveals how, in the developmental process, certain patently problematic depictions of race are changed, but others remain, nodding towards diversity while still serving the Whiteness so prevalent in mainstream media.

Rowe, Rebecca, Tolonda Henderson, and Tianyu Wang. “What’s in a Name?: Text Mining, Hermione Granger, and Fan Fiction.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 36, 2021, doi:10.3983/twc.2021.1997.

  • When fans rewrite characters, how do they engage that character’s identity and the social constructions around it? Fan fiction writers resist, replicate, and create oppressive social systems by changing characters between published and fan texts. As such, fan studies scholars have long been interested in how fans construct characters, an interest that has often been paired with readings of race, gender, and sexuality. Digital humanities can help confirm and nuance extant fan studies scholarship around specific characters popular in fan fiction. We used Word2Vec software to mine the text of 450 pieces of fan fiction based on J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. By focusing on the depiction of Hermione Granger in both Rowling’s novels and Harry Potter fan fiction, we tested how text mining character names can reveal properties closely tied to a specific character through the relationships between the target name and other characters. Analysis via Word2Vec found that “Hermione” is used grammatically and contextually differently in the books (in which she is most like Harry and Ron) than in our fan fiction corpus (in which she is most like other girls/women). This difference suggests that these fans have a specific reading of Hermione that is communally understood even if Rowling’s diction offers a different reading.

“Adopting Diversity and Ignoring Race: Representations of Race in Jessie’s and K.C. Undercover’s Families of Color.” Lizzie McGuire to Andi Mack: The Disney Channel’s Tween Programming 2000-2019, edited by Christopher Bell, McFarland. In Press.

  • The Disney Channel’s programming, designed for tween audiences, largely revolves around the family, and this chapter analyzes how race and family collide, focusing on two shows: Jessie (2011-2015) and K.C. Undercover (2015-2018). These two shows approach race differently: Jessie follows a multiracial family created primarily through adoption, demonstrating people of different races and cultures existing within one family, and K.C. Undercover follows an upper-middle-class Black family, demonstrating that Black people can succeed in White-dominant areas, no matter their race. Yet, each of these tactics ultimately fails, often due to the depiction of the family unit: Jessie is built on drastic racist stereotypes that many viewers scorn, and K.C. Undercover ignores the very real racism people of color face today, suggesting that our society is past racism and thus implying that people of color are exaggerating or creating their own problems. Both of these shows echo televisual race portrayals from decades ago, demonstrating that even in the surprising diversity of The Disney Channel, Disney is still behind the times in racial representation. Ultimately, I suggest that The Disney Channel regurgitates such portrayals because it is largely viewed by children and their families and so does not receive the same amount of attention, and thus possible activism, as some of Disney’s other properties that have a larger adult audience.

“Shaping Girls: Analyzing Animated Female Body Shapes.” Animation: an interdisciplinary journal, vol. 4, no. 1, 2019, pp. 22-36, doi:10.1177/1746847719829871.

  • The debate over whether television and film affect girls’ body image has been contentious. Researchers argue that film and television negatively affect, only partially affect, or do not affect girls’ body image. These studies have one common limitation: they approach animated female bodies as if they are the same because they are, mostly, thin. In this project, I extend and complicate this existing scholarship by analyzing bodies in 67 films produced by several American animation studios from 1989 through 2016. In this study, I classify 239 female characters as one of four body types: Hourglass, Pear, Rectangle, or Inverted Triangle. My argument is two-fold: (1) over the last 30 years, there has been a shift from a singular dominant shape (Hourglass) to the dominance of several body shapes (especially Pear and Rectangle); and (2) young girls may be affected by characters their own age who have been largely ignored in studies thus far. I argue that young girls see diverse images of bodies rather than the singular image that scholars study. Girls’ body image may be affected by animation, but animated images are so diverse that this effect may be difficult to determine. A more nuanced understanding of the body shapes animation utilizes may allow researchers to study the more complex messages that girls do or do not internalize.
  • This piece received notice from local media outlets, including a couple of UConn publications, a few local radio stations, and a local news site.

“‘The More Accuracy the Better’?: Analysing Adaptation Reception in Reaction Videos.” Adaptation, vol. 11, no. 3, 2018, pp. 193–208, doi:10.1093/adaptation/apx026.

  • Fans experiencing adaptations often discuss them in terms of how faithful they are to their source texts. Casie Hermansson argues that ‘There are…signs of increasing value placed on the lay perspective and thus on fidelity as a critical…tool’ (149–50) because, as Dudley Andrews argues, ‘Fidelity is the umbilical cord that nourishes the judgments of ordinary viewers as they comment on what are effectively aesthetic and moral values’ (27). While audiences may discuss adaptations in terms of fidelity, fidelity does not have a stable meaning across all audience members. As Robert Stam argues, ‘The question of fidelity ignores the wider question: Fidelity to what?’ (57). Viewers desire adaptations to remain true in different ways, and it can be difficult for producers and scholars alike to discover what exactly audiences want in a ‘faithful’ adaptation. Scholars need effective tools to measure how audiences perceive fidelity, and reaction videos can be one of these tools. This article traces the history of film reception studies and how changing media requires changing analysis tools. Then, it gives a general theorization of reaction videos, including what they are and the benefits and limits of using them. Finally, the article ends with a case study of reaction videos of Netflix’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events to more concretely demonstrate how these videos illuminate fidelity, paying close attention to how these videos, and their comment sections, depict clashing desires around fidelity. The ultimate aim is to offer the beginnings of a new methodology that might allow scholars to interrogate the way contemporary audiences experience fidelity.

“‘But Mother, I’m a Man Now’: Childhood and Community in the Musical and Film Versions of Into the Woods.” Children’s Literature, vol. 46, 2018, pp. 96—111, doi:10.1353/chl.2018.0005. .

  • Juxtaposing the characterizations of Jack and Little Red Ridinghood in the 1987 stage production of Into the Woods and the 2014 Disney film adaptation demonstrates how perceptions of childhood have changed and suggests that the new millennium holds simultaneous differing views about childhood, granting children new agency while highlighting their dependence.
  • Before this piece was an article, it won the MA-level Children’s Literature Association Graduate Student Essay Award in 2016.

Book Reviews

Contemporary Hollywood Animation: Style, Storytelling, Culture and Ideology Since the 1990s, by Noel Brown. The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 45, no. 2, 2021, pp. 251-253, doi:10.1353/uni.2021.0020.

Representing Agency in Popular Culture: Children and Youth on Page, Screen, and In Between, edited by Ingrid E. Castro and Jessica Clark. Children’s Literature, vol. 48, 2020, pp. 285-289, doi:10.1353/chl.2020.0019.

Contemporary British Children’s Fiction and Cosmopolitanism by Fiona McCulloch. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1, 2019, pp. 120—122, doi:10.1353/chq.2019.0012.

Public-Facing Work

Blog Posts

“Not Just in Theaters: How the Pandemic Has Changed How We Watch Disney Films.” Disney, Culture and Society Research Network, 22 Aug 2023, https://www.dis-net.org/post/not-just-in-theaters-how-the-pandemic-has-changed-how-we-watch-disney-films.

“DisNet and Animation Immersion: Disney Synergy Turns Us into Kids.” Disney, Culture and Society Research Network, 17 April 2023, https://disnetwork.wixsite.com/disnet/post/disnet-and-animation-immersion-disney-synergy-turns-us-into-kids.

“The Pooh with a Thousand Faces.” Disney, Culture and Society Research Network, 8 March 2023, https://disnetwork.wixsite.com/disnet/post/the-pooh-with-a-thousand-faces.

Interviews

Lockstadt, Taneal. “Rachel Zegler Said Her Snow White Won’t Be ‘Saved by a Prince.’ Some Disney Fans Didn’t Want to Hear It.” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Entertainment, 24 Aug 2023, https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/disney-princess-remakes-1.6945540.

Best, Kenneth. “Study: On Screen, Girls’ Bodies are Changing.” UConn Today, 18 Sep 2019, https://today.uconn.edu/2019/09/study-screen-girls-bodies-changing/#.

Ongoing Digital Humanities Work

Our Teaching Materials Archive

  • A digital archive of the teaching materials students develop in my courses (with student permission, of course) so students can benefit from each others’ ideas, both in class and on the job, along with additional teaching resources curated by myself.

Harry Potter and the Analysis of Fan Fiction

  • In collaboration with Tolonda Henderson and Tianyu Wang: an interactive website designed to allow both creators and users to explore how J.K. Rowling and fans describe and understand key characters using text mining.

Multimodality, Film, and You

  • an educational website for students designing multimodal projects to explore how different media will interact with exploration and presentation of film.