NAJWA AL-TABAA is a graduate student in English Literature at the University of Florida. Her research interests include twentieth-century literature with an emphasis on American postmodern historical fiction and war, post-9/11 fiction and national trauma, science fiction and horror fiction, and comic studies. She is teaching an undergraduate class on horror fiction in the fall of 2012 and looks forward to exposing her students to the work of Neil Gaiman who is definitely on the syllabus.
TRACY L. BEALER teaches literature and composition at Metropolitan State College in Denver. She specializes in the twentieth-century American novel with a particular interest in pop culture and genre fiction. She has published on William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Quentin Tarantino, and the Harry Potter and Twilight series. She is a regular and enthusiastic attender at the biannual Whedon Studies Association Slayage conference, and follows Neil Gaiman’s Twitter feed with a fervency bordering on pathological obsession.
JONAS-SÉBASTIEN BEAUDRY is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford, and regularly escapes to London Below. He worked as a Henigson Fellow (Harvard Human Rights Program) in an Argentinean human rights NGO, and served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, and at the International Court of Justice. He also worked for the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He has published scholarly articles in international law, human rights, and moral philosophy.
RAY BOSSERT is a visiting assistant professor at Franklin and Marshall College, where he teaches courses on Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare, and “Geek Lit.” His academic interests range from political slave discourse in seventeenth-century England to anti-modernism in J.R.R. Tolkien. He once stood about three feet next to Neil Gaiman during the 2004 Annual Mythopoeic Conference, but could think of nothing witty to say. He would be the American God of Missed Opportunity.
BRANDON KEMPNER is an Associate Professor of English at New Mexico Highlands University. His favorite Gaiman character is Barnabas the dog, and he still holds out hope for a dog-focused Sandman sequel. Brandon has published articles on 9/11 fiction, on Walter Mosley and the Afrofuturist novel, on Mark Twain’s influence in Mad Men and The Sopranos, and on existentialism and The Walking Dead.
The name GREG LITTMANN is a corruption of the Old Irish grúac loch maccoím, or ‘hairy lake boy’, a malevolent nature spirit which causes sickness in cattle if not propitiated with the sacrifice of philosophical ideas. Knowledge of the creature was brought to the Americas by Bishop Berkeley of Cloyne in the eighteenth century and Greg Littmann has since set itself up as a professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where it teaches metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy and literature, while feasting on the thoughts of students. In deference to Apollo, Tenure, and other gods of wisdom old and new, it has published in metaphysics and the philosophy of logic and has written chapters for books relating philosophy to Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, Dune, Final Fantasy, A Game of Thrones, The Onion, Sherlock Holmes, and The Walking Dead. Greg Littmann’s symbol is a textbook soaked in blood.
RACHEL LURIA has been hangin’ with the Dream King since 1992, when she frequently and without remorse pillaged her friend Stephen’s collection of The Sandman comics and wouldn’t give them back until she was good and done with them. Which may or may not have been never. She is currently an assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Wilkes Honors College and has published numerous articles and works of fiction. Her current project is a monograph about female action heroes with co-editor Tracy Bealer.
KANDACE LYTLE is a PhD student in English at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, and enjoys studying literature and film in relation to philosophy. When she’s not doing schoolwork, Kandace is an avid writer, concert attendee, movie fanatic, and dancer who enjoys exploring liminal spaces and going on adventures with her adorable beagle Rowdy, who has no trouble passing through doors into other worlds.
TUOMAS W. MANNINEN (if you really must know) is a lecturer at the Arizona State University at the West Campus in the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, where he teaches many and various courses in most things philosophical. His research is focused on the metaphysics of artifacts, the metaphysics of persons, as well as on questions in philosophy of science and philosophy of religion (especially where the two fields intersect). He doesn’t think too highly of daiquiris (with or without bananas), and although he doesn’t expect anyone to send him money, he would not turn down an offer for a tenure-track position in philosophy.
WADE NEWHOUSE teaches in the English and Theatre departments at William Peace University in Raleigh. He manages to work some discussions of ghosts and haunting into almost all of his courses, which include Advanced Composition, Children’s Literature, Southern Literature, and Law and Literature. He is also the Assistant Director of the improvisational comedy troupe “Raleigh’s Village Idiots,” and he organizes an annual improv workshop for William Peace students. Because of all this activity, Wade has been called a Jack of All Trades, but not in the immortal murdering way.
T. BRADLEY RICHARDS specializes in the philosophy of mind (the philosophy of consciousness, perception, and attention in particular). He has studied at the University of Toronto, the University of Guelph, and as a visitor to the Centre for Consciousness Studies at the Australian National University. He has written a number of screenplays, photographed bands such as Rush, and is an avid narrative and documentary filmmaker. Brad enjoys teaching philosophy, especially philosophy of film and media. He is a long-time Neil Gaiman fan.
RICHARD ROSENBAUM edits fiction for The Incongruous Quarterly <incongruousquarterly.com> and Broken Pencil magazine <broken-pencil.com>. He edited the short story anthology Can’tLit: Fearless Fiction from Broken Pencil Magazine. Richard has met Neil Gaiman in person twice, and one time saw him at a movie theater but didn’t want to bother him.
LISA SWANSTROM is an Assistant Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of research include science fiction, fantasy, and the digital humanities. Before joining the English Department at FAU, she was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Digital Humanities at Umeå University’s HUMlab in northern Sweden (2010), as well as the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in the Digital Humanities in the English Department at Brandeis University in Massachusetts (2008–2009). Her favorite game of chance is seven-card stud.
ROBERT T. TALLY JR. studied metaphysics and logorrhetics under Sister Mary Loquacious of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl, under whose tutelage he developed the rigorous scholarly discipline afforded by nearly uninterrupted discourse. He now teaches American and world literature at Texas State University, where he remains on the lookout for various Old World deities and the odd portal to another world. The author of Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel: A Postmodern Iconography and Melville, Mapping and Globalization: Literary Cartography in the American Baroque Writer, Tally is also the editor of Geocritical Explorations: Space, Place, and Mapping in Literary and Cultural Studies.
ANDREW TERJESEN received his PhD in Philosophy from Duke University and is currently pursuing a JD at the University of Virginia School of Law. Prior to law school, he had been a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College, Washington and Lee University, and Austin College. Andrew has written chapters in Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy, The Onion and Philosophy, Manga and Philosophy, and Supervillains and Philosophy. Although he looks forward to becoming a lawyer, he can’t imagine how Bernie Capax did it for fifteen thousand years.
WAYNE YUEN teaches philosophy at Ohlone College in Fremont. He’s the editor of The Walking Dead and Philosophy: Zombie Apocalypse Now, as well as a contributor to Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead and The Golden Compass and Philosophy: God Bites the Dust. He’s also pretty sure that in some kind of alternate world, be it reached by crawling through a door, using a mirror-mask, or exploring a forgotten underground, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are his super-friends where together they bring philosophy to life for the masses. Or at the very least that Neil reads him bedtime stories while Amanda sings lullabies.