After a childhood partly "wasted" on Mazinger-Z and Hyakujuu-Ou Go-Lion (Tranzor-Z and Voltron in the U.S.), I came into my adolescent years unaware that some of my childhood TV diet came from Japan originally. I spent my undergraduate and Master's degree years at Clemson University studying U.S. and Western European history and financial managment (to get that "real job"), but my graduate school years held different plans.

I thought little of Japanese animation until I finished my M.Ed. and came to the University of Georgia's Department of Social Foundations of Education in 2000 to begin work on a Ph.D. During my first week at UGA, I came across a group of students, UGAnime, who showcased the anime that I had (re)familiarized myself with at technology conventions. I joined this club (and maintain membership) where I kindled a powerful interest in this unique medium of entertainment from Japan.

Around this same time, my experiences in Social Foundations began to build upon some of the concerns I cultivated at Clemson concerning race, education, culture, and power. Eventually my theoretical perspectives on socialization and pedagogy included acknowledging:

* the relational symbol-centric social processes of symbolic interactionism
* the constraints of and challenges to hegemony noted by critical theorists
* the primacy of race as a socio-historical force in U.S. institutional life
* the contributions of Husserlian phenomenology and narrative analysis to the study of anime fandom
* the implications of U.S. anime fandom for comparative and international educators

Currently, my research is concerned with fandom conceptions of cultural authenticity and how they are affected by fandom pedagogy (most notably in the well-tred "subtitles vs. dubbing" anime fandom debate). My work also addresses how what Henry Jenkins called "textual poaching" takes place within internally-contested anime fandom contexts that both resist and are influenced by wider U.S. social conceptions of race, gender, and nationalism as well as the mainstream media and globalization.

I currently make my living by working with Interim Associate Dean Kathleen deMarrais to help the College of Education at UGA secure NCATE accreditation. Before that, I was an adjunct professor of Foundations of Education at Gainesville State College. Today, I also serve on the editorial board of the anime, manga, and video game-oriented academic journal Mechademia. In the meantime, I continue to make progress on my degree with the helpful aid of my advisor, Professor Judith Preissle, through a process of study, data gathering, analysis, reflection, and (re)writing.

Though I selected accomplished scholars who I believe to be the best at what they do for my dissertation committee, the only possibly more circumspect judges of my work will be anime fans themselves. Your reactions, welcoming and hostile, will be a crucial yardstick by which the worth of this process will be judged by myself, though perhaps in ways you may not suspect.

Personal Fun Fact: I share the same birthday as Astro Boy - April 7th.