Mary Ellen Iatropoulos

Every update on my website, it seems, is fated to begin with a similar sentiment.

“It’s been a while since my last update, I’ve been so busy…”

The thought occurs that posting nothing on my website for almost a year may give the opposite impression.

Rest assured though, dear readers, I’ve been up to a great many things. So many, in fact, that when I get home from work for the day or when I have an extra hour on a weekend, I want to spend it resting and recuperating rather than writing about what it is that’s been exhausting me.

And while I’m exhausted, I’m also enthused and inspired! Let me tell you all about my many projects at present.

• I’m proofing and indexing my soon-to-be-published collection Joss Whedon and Race: Critical Essays. My co-editor Lowery A. Woodall III and I have been working on this for five years, and it’s going to be such a relief when it finally comes out! For more information, click here: http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-7010-5

• I’m teaching two sections of Film Vs Video On YouTube for middle-school students. You can read more about that here.

• Also on my docket at Spark Media Project: managing our internship program (we have 10 interns this semester…so far!), overseeing the implementation of our FRAME programs as well as our DROP Studios programs, handling media education contracts with the Adriance Library and Family Service’s Office of Sexual Violence Prevention… I’m getting to collaborate with many wonderful people on producing media products that critically engage with our society and speak truth to power. I’ll be posting more about specifics soon. For now, though, you should check out this amazing documentary created by last year’s DROP TV youth producers. We just learned it’s been accepted to the Tower of Youth Film Festival, and we couldn’t be prouder! Watch it here!

• I’m seeking proposals for two NeMLA 2017 sessions. One is a panel session entitled “Questioning Canon: Transmedia Storytelling in 21st-Century Pop Culture Narratives.” Here’s the abstract:

The other is a roundtable session entitled Superheroes and (Dis)Ability. Here’s the abstract for that one:

Potential panelists must sign into the NeMLA system to submit their abstracts to one or both panels. To log in, to create an account, and to get more info on what that entails, go here. The deadline is September 30th, and I’m very open to discussing abstracts and their suitability to the topic prior to submission, so drop me a line if you’re interested!

• I’m working on a chapter for the forthcoming anthology Can the Subaltern Be A Superhero? The Politics of Non-Hegemonic Superheroism. My chapter explores the interdependence of aesthetics and politics in the recent Ms. Marvel comic series featuring Kamala Khan, and is tentatively entitled: “Negative Space and Narrative Subjugation: The Paradox of Representing Empowerment in Ms. Marvel.” It’s been a fascinating research project so far, and now comes the time for turning notes into prose. Or, as I like to call it… the hard part.

There’s a lot on the docket, a lot of strands in the ol’ duder’s head (to quote The Big Lebowski), but I’m grateful to be involved in so many interesting projects that mean so much to me.