Joseph Michael Sommers

Joseph Michael Sommers

Assistant Professor of English, Central Michigan University

MLA, ChLA, NCTE, Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, etc.

Contact Details

Email: somme1jm@cmich.edu

Postal Address: Anspach Hall 229, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, 48858, USA

Website: http://cmich.edu/chsbs/x30938.xml (university staff page)

Research Interests

Research interests: Children’s and Young Adult Literature, British and American Late-Nineteenth through Twenty First-Century Literature and Culture, Bakhtinian /Narrative Theory, Comic and Pop Cultural Studies

Publications

“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 (Winter 2012) Print.*

*Note: This article was scheduled to come out this Fall but has moved to the second issue of ChLA Quarterly in 2012.

Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore. McFarland: Jefferson, (2012) Print.

“The Polarizing of Alan Moore’s Sexual Politics,” Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore Ed. Todd Comer and Joseph Michael Sommers. McFarland: Jefferson, (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. Ed. Todd Comer and Joseph Michael Sommers. McFarland: Jefferson, (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.

“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.

Conference Papers and Talks

Conf. Paper: “When the Zombies Came for Our Children: Exploring Posthumanism in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead” June 2012 Simmons College, Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference

Conf. Paper: “Embodied in Name Alone: Nobody Owens and the Metonymic Estrangement from the Living and the Dead in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book” January 2012 ChLA Sponsored Panel at Modern Language Association Conference

Invited Speaking Engagement: “Teaching 9/11: A Conversation with Future Educators” July 2011 John Jay College, Academy for Critical Incident Analysis Conference

Invited Speaking Engagement: “From Hogwarts to Central Michigan: Approaches to Harry Potter ” April 2011 Central Michigan University, Harry Potter’s World/Imagining the Fantastic

Conf. Paper and Chair: “When Little Girls Grow Up: Childhood Trauma Revisited as Sexual Fantasy and Spiritual Healing in Alan Moore’s Lost Girls” October 2010 Film and Science: Biennial Conference by the Center for the Study of Film and History

Panel Chair: “Animated Films: Anime and Disney” June 2010 Eastern Michigan University, Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference

Conf. Paper: “The Other Edward: Twilight’s Queer Construction of the Vampire as an Idealized Teenage Boyfriend” June 2010 Eastern Michigan University, Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference

Invited Speaking Engagement: “On The Silver Age of Marvel Comics.” March 2010 Rollins University

Conf. Paper and Chair: “Race and History in the Marvel Universe” March 2010 Read in Absentia due to illness IAFA, Orlando, FL

Conf. Paper and Chair: “Expanding the Canon of Adolescent Literature” November 2009 Arkansas Curriculum Conference

Conf. Paper and Chair: “Preacher’s Stance on Religion: ‘F**k Communism.’” October 2009 Arkansas Philological Association Annual Conference

Conf. Paper: “The Cyclical Evolution of Marvel’s Big Three Comics: From Dime-Store Fantasies to Moody, Brooding Motion Pictures (and Back Again)” June 2009 UNC—Charlotte, Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference

Panel Chair: “Responding to Trauma“ June 2009 UNC—Charlotte, Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference

Conf. Paper: “The Science [Fiction] of Evil – Guillermo del Toro’s Transformation of Theology into Technology in Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army ” October 2008 Film and Science: Biennial Conference by the Center for the Study of Film and History

Panel Chair: “Latinization of the US and the US in Latin America” February 2008 University of Kansas, Nuestra America in the US? Latino/a Studies Conference

Conf. Paper and Chair: “Chronicles of Narnia: Manifold Mythopoetics (Towards a Reconsideration of the Post World Wars Fantasy Novel for Children)” November 2007 Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association Conference

Conf. Paper and Chair: “Infernal Translations: Examining the Irish Gangster in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed” October 2007 University of Kansas, Literature/ Film Association Conference

Conf. Paper and Chair: “Chronicling Life in the Shadow of the Unattainable: Autobiographical Hemingway’s Narrative Confessions and the Villains He Creates in Order to Surpass Them” November 2004 Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Convention

Conf. Paper and Chair: “The Trappings of the “Free” Associative Mind: Stephen Dedalus’ Jesuitical Aesthetic Theory and Its Inhibitive Narrative Reality” June 2004 University of Kansas, Joyce’s Ireland: Bloomsday Centenary Conference

Conf. Paper and Chair: “The Trappings of Faith: Stephen Dedalus’ Search for Artistic Meaning through Catholic Discourse in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses” April 2004 University of Vermont, Narrative: An International Conference

Conf. Paper: “To Make a Start out of Particulars”: Tracing the Failures of Poetic Language through the Early Poetics of William Carlos Williams into Paterson” March 2003 University of Southern Colorado, Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery

Conf. Paper: “Recovering Marshall: An Anagogic Analysis of Eminem’s Tripartite Construction of Self” March 2003 Marquette University, “Women and Creativity”: Women’s Studies Conference