Boy and Girl Wonders:
Robin in Cultural Context
“Explodes with new insights and information about Batman’s oft-neglected and marginalized sidekick.” – Professor Henry Jenkins
This long-form academic work examines the storytelling traditions which came together to create Robin, and those pop figures which appeared in the years following Robin’s heyday. Through this exploration, the appeal Robin holds for disenfranchised audience groups becomes clear, as does the impact which these groups have had on the character’s evolution. Any revenue I make from Boy and Girl Wonders: Robin in Cultural Context is donated to charities which help children in crisis.
Essay collections
The Girl Who Was On Fire is a collection of essays about the Hunger Games trilogy. My essay, Your Heart Is a Weapon the Size of Your Fist: Love as a Political Act in the Hunger Games, explores the way empathy, passion and personal loyalty are all rebellions against oppressive regimes.
Divergent Thinking is a collection of essays about the Divergent trilogy. I contributed an analysis of the role familial bonds play in the series in my essay They Injure Each Other in the Same Way.
These two collections include my essay Damon Salvatore, Vampire Hunter, which examines the tropes surrounding the figure of the vampire hunter in pop culture and how Damon fits within them.
Minutes to Midnight is a collection of essays about Watchmen. My essay examines the roles that music plays in constructing the story, and its legacy in musical pop culture.
In the Hunt is a collection of essays about the show Supernatural. My essay Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jo the Monster Killer, compares and contrasts how Buffy‘s Buffy and Supernatural‘s Jo are each constructed by their texts, and what this means in a wider context of the horror genre.
Batman Unauthorized includes my essay Gotham’s First Family, which breaks down Batman’s origin story into its individual parts and examines how different eras and creators have played with them.
The Neil Gaiman Reader includes my essay Pink and Blue: Gender in The Sandman.