Sommers, Joseph

Books

Neil Gaiman in Darkness, In Light, In Shadow. Jackson, MS: UP Mississippi, 2018.

Conversations with Neil Gaiman. Jackson, MS: UP Mississippi, 2017.

Critical Insights on Neil Gaiman, Salem Press, 2016.

The American Comic Book. Jefferson, NY: Grey House Press, 2014. Print.

Co-authored with Gretchen Papazian Game On, Hollywood: The Intersection of Video Games and Movies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Print.

Co-authored with Todd Comer Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. Print.

Journals

Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Special Issue on Comics, Cartoons, and Animation, Ed. By Joseph Michael Sommers ( Forthcoming 2017)

Articles and Book Chapters

"Parodic Potty Humor and Superheroic Potentiality in Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Captain Underpants." Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults. Ed. Michelle Abate and Gwen Athene Tarbox UP-MIssissippi.

"The Wonderful Wizard of OZ: a Naturalist Story of Consumerism and Object Fetishism Re-imagined as the Great American Fairy Tale." Children's Literature Review. Ed. Lawrence Trudeau. 2017.

"The History of the Comics Presses." The Secret Origins of Comic Studies Ed. By Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan. New York: Routledge, 2017. 276-285. Print. 

"About this Volume." and "On Matters of Dreaming, World Building, and Finding Neil Gaiman's Magic." Critical Insights: Neil Gaiman. Ed. By Joseph Michael Sommers Amenia, NY: Grey House Press, 2016. vii-xxviii. Print 

"Embodied in Name Alone: Nobody Owens and the Metonymic Estrangement from the Living and the Dead in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book." Critical Insights: Neil Gaiman. Ed. By Joseph Michael Sommers. 

"When the Zombies Came for Our Children: Exploring Posthumanism in Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead." The Comics Grid: Journal of Comic Scholarship 6.2 (2016) Web. 22 January 2016. 

When Comic Books Became Everything but Simply Books ...And the Fans Took Over the World (or at least San Diego)." The American Comic Book. Ed. By Joseph Michael Sommers. Jefferson, NY: Grey House Press, 2014 Print.

"Negotiating Popular Genres in Comic Books: An Impossible Mission. Against All Odds. Yet, Somehow, The Chapter is Saved!" The American Comic Book. Ed. By Joseph Michael Sommers. Jefferson, NY: Grey House Press, 2014 Print.

"The Journey Back: Whereupon There Are No Heroes With Whom to Identify." First Opinions, Second Reactions. 2 (2013) Web. 19 August 2014.

"The Phoenix and The Fireman: Dialogistic Inversion In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451." Critical Insights on Fahrenheit 451. Ed. By Rafeeq McGiveron. NY: Grey House Publishing. 2013. 50-61. Print. 

“Manifest Narrativity: Video Games, Movies, and Art and Adaptation,”  Game On, Hollywood: The Intersection of Video Games and Movies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. 8-19. Print.

“C. S. Lewis’ Manifold Mythopoeics: Towards a Reconsideration of Eschatological Time in the Construction of  the Post-World Wars Fantasy Novel for Children,” New Casebooks – C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of  Narnia Ed. By Lance Wendy and Michelle Abate. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 90-112. Print.

“The Traumatic Revision of Marvel’s Spider-Man: From 1960s Dime-Store Comic Book  to Post-9/11 Moody  Multi-Billion Dollar Motion Picture Franchise.“ Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 37 (Summer  2012) 188-209. Print.

“Lost in the Revolution: The Polarizing of Alan Moore’s Sexual Politics,” Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 5-15. Print.

"When ‘One Bad Day’ Becomes One Dark Knight: Love, Madness and Obsession in the Adaptation of The Killing Joke into Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight,” Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore.  Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 40-51. Print.

“Crooked Appalachia: The Laughter of the Melungeon Witches Contextualized within the Outsider Mythos of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy.“ Comics and the American South. Ed. Brannon Costello and Qiana Whitted. U Mississippi P (2011) 214-241. Print.

Co-authored with Amy Hume.  “The Other Edward: Twilight’s Queer Construction of the Vampire as an Idealized Teenage Boyfriend.” Bringing Light to Twilight: Perspectives on a Pop Culture Phenomenon. Ed. By Giselle Anatol. NY: Palgrave. 2011 153-68. Print.

“Godey’s Lady’s Book: Sarah Hale and the Construction of a Sentimental Nationalism” College Literature 37 (Summer 2010) 43-62. Print.

“’Are You There, Reader? It’s Me, Margaret’: A Reconsideration of Judy Blume’s Prose as Sororal Dialogism." Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 33 (Fall 2008) 258-279. Print.

• Ph.D. English, University of Kansas, May 2007
  Specialties: Children’s and Adolescent Literature/ American Literature
• M.A. English, Marquette University, May 2002
  Specialties: British/American Literature
• B.S.E. Secondary English Education, Missouri Western State University, May 2000
• B.A. Writing-Intensive English Journalism, Marquette University, May 1998

• Children's and Young Adult Literature
  
•  Popular Culture
  
•  Illustrated Texts (Comics, Graphic Novels & Picture Books)
  
•  Late-Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty First-Century Literature and Culture
  
• Bakhtinian /Narrative Theory
• Walt Whitman