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About

Eric Berlatsky is Professor of English, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Comparative Studies. He frequently researches and teaches around the fringes of SF/Fantasy, depending upon how one defines these genres. In recent years, he has primarily been a Comics Studies scholar, with work on both “literary” comics (not typically associated with SF) and superhero comics, which arise out of the pulp SF tradition. He is the author of (The Ohio State University Press, 2011), the editor of (University Press of Mississippi, 2012), and the co-editor, with ����Vlog colleague Sika Dagbovie-Mullins, of (Rutgers UP, 2021), which examines the relationship between racial mixedness and the superhero archetype as articulated in comics, film, television, poetry, and popular culture.

The Real, The True, and The Told explores the intersections of postmodern theory, narrative theory, historiographic theory, and contemporary fiction, while Alan Moore: Conversations is a collection of interviews with the co-creator of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, and Lost Girls. Berlatsky has also authored or co-authored articles on The Flash, Black Lightning and Moon Girl, Ms. Marvel, Superman, Spider-Man (and the villain Vermin), Watchmen, Posy Simmonds' Gemma Bovery, Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album, Dickens' David Copperfield, Paul Auster's Ghosts, narrative frames, and other topics. His non-SF research profile also includes publications on (post)modernism, modern and contemporary British and Anglophone literature, and related subjects. He teaches twentieth-century British literature, literary theory, postcolonial literature, postmodern literature, and comics.

CV

Undergraduate SF Courses (Courses with SF Content):

• LIT 4001 The Graphic Novel (one unit on superheroes)
• AML 4930 American Comics and Graphic Novels (one unit on superheroes)
• AML 4930 Superhero Comics
• LIT 4930 Spider-Man at 60
• ENL 3132 20th Century British Novel (included Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on one occasion)
• ENL 4273 20th Century British Literature (included V for Vendetta on one occasion)

Graduate SF Courses

• LIT 5009 Comics and Graphic Novels (one unit on superheroes)
• LIT 6932 Superhero Comics
• LIT 6932 Superheroes (includes films and television, in addition to comics)
• LIT 6936/6934 Time and Space in Modern and Contemporary Literature: (includes modernist/postmodernist experiments with temporal and spatial presentation, but also includes things like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, the films 12 Monkeys, La Jetée, and Primer and other texts that might be considered SF if one is flexible about the definition)

Select SF Books

with Sika Dagbovie-Mullins, eds. Mixed-Race Superheroes. Rutgers UP, 2021. Edited Collection.

Alan Moore: Conversations (editor, author of introduction and chronology). University of Mississippi Press, 2012. Edited Collection.

Select SF Articles & Book Chapters

with Sika Dagbovie-Mullins. “Introduction.” Mixed-Race Superheroes, edited by Sika A. Dagbovie- Mullins and Eric L. Berlatsky, Rutgers UP, 2021, pp. 1-24.

“Flash of Two Races: Incest, Miscegenation and the Mixed-Race Superhero in The Flash Comics and Television Show.” Mixed-Race Superheroes, edited by Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric L. Berlatsky, Rutgers UP, 2021, pp. 81-102.

with Sika Dagbovie-Mullins. “The Mixed-Race Child Within: Psychoanalyzing Race, Trauma, Vermin and Spider-Man.’” American Imago, vol. 77, no. 3, 2020, pp. 569-601. Special issue on Comics and Psychoanalysis, edited by Vera Camden.

with Sika Dagbovie-Mullins. “‘The Only Nerdy Pakistani-American-Slash-Inhuman in the Entire Universe’: Postracialism and Politics in the New Ms. Marvel.” Ms. Marvel’s America: No Normal, edited by Jessica Baldanzi and Hussein Rashid, U of Mississippi P, 2020, pp. 65-88.

with Sika Dagbovie-Mullins. “The Whiteness of the Whale and the Darkness of the Dinosaur: The Africanist Presence in Superhero Comics from Black Lightning to Moon Girl.” Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, edited by Sean Guynes and P. Martin Lund, Ohio State UP, 2020, pp. 38-56.

Comics Forum, edited by Ian Hague, 11 April 2013.

“Time and Free Will: Bergson, Modernism, Superheroes, and Watchmen.” Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism, edited by S. E. Gontarski, Laci Mattison, and Paul Ardoin, Bloomsbury, 2012, pp. 256-80.

Select SF Book Reviews, Encyclopedia Entries, Etc.

Routledge, 2022. International Journal of Comic Art.

Ohio State UP, 2021. International Journal of Comic Art, vol. 23, no. 2, Fall/Winter 2021, pp. 551-56.

of Texas P, 2018. Imagetext, vol. 11, no. 2, 2020, 14 pars.

“Sunshine Superman.” Rev. of Ian S. Garlington. The Adventures of Acidman: Psychedelics and the Evolution of Consciousness in Science Fiction and Superhero Comics from the 1960s Onward. Eihosha, 2016. Science Fiction Studies, no. 45, 2018, pp. 608-12.

Rutgers UP, 2016. Imagetext, vol. 9, no. 2, 2017, 13 pars.

Walter de Gruyter, 2013. Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art, vol. 2, no. 1, Nov. 2015, pp. 78-84.

Rev. of Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester, eds. The Superhero Reader. UP of Mississippi, 2013. Imagetext, vol. 8, no. 2, 2015, 8 pars.

“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, vol. 4: 1995-present, edited by M. Keith Booker, Greenwood P, 2014, pp. 1598-1600.

“Lost Girls.” Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, vol. 4: 1995-present, edited by M. Keith Booker, Greenwood P, 2014, pp. 1611-13.

“Love and Rockets.” Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, vol. 3: 1980-1995, edited by M. Keith Booker, Greenwood P, 2014, pp. 1128-30.

“Moore, Alan [III].” Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, vol. 3: 1980-1995, edited by M. Keith Booker, Greenwood P, 2014, pp. 1156-60.

"Moore, Alan [IV]." Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, vol. 4: 1995-present, edited by M. Keith Booker, Greenwood P, 2014, pp. 1651-55.

“Sandman.” Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, vol. 3: 1980-1995, edited by M. Keith Booker, Greenwood P, 2014, pp. 1212-14.

“V for Vendetta.” Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, vol. 3: 1980-1995, edited by M. Keith Booker, Greenwood P, 2014, pp. 1289-91.

“Watchmen.” Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, vol. 3: 1980-1995, edited by M. Keith Booker, Greenwood P, 2014, pp. 1294-97.

University of Mississippi P, 2004. Imagetext, vol. 6, no. 2, 2012, 12 pars.

Fantagraphics Books, 2010. Imagetext, vol. 6, no. 2, 2012, 14 pars.

Baker, Bill. “Comics: Editor Eric Berlatsky Discusses His Alan Moore: Conversations Anthology.” The Morton Report, 26 Oct. 2011.

___. “Comics: Editor Eric Berlatsky Discusses His Alan Moore: Conversations Anthology, part 2.” The Morton Report , 28 Oct. 2011.

University of Mississippi P, 2009. Imagetext, vol. 5, no. 4, 2009, 12 pars.

“The Pageantry of the Past and the Reflection of the Present: History, ‘Reality,’ and Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts.” The Twelfth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf Proceedings: Across the Generations, edited by Merry Pawlowski and Eileen Barrett, The Center for Virginia Woolf Studies, 2003, pp. 170-76.

Select SF-Related Invited Talks and Conference Presentations

with Sika Dagbovie-Mullins. “Mixed Race Superheroes.” Critical Mixed-Race Studies Conference, February 2022.

with Sika Dagbovie-Mullins. “The Mixed-Race Child Within: Psychoanalyzing Race, Trauma, Vermin, and Spider-Man.” Panel on Comics on the Couch: Comics and Psychoanalysis. Modern Language Association Conference, Jan. 2021.

“Vermin, the Seduction Theory, and the Psychology of Race in ‘Spider-Man: The Child Within.’” Michigan State University Comics Forum, Feb. 2020.

“Flash of Two Races: Incest, Miscegenation, and the Mixed-Race Superhero in The Flash Comics and Television Show.” Michigan State University Comics Forum, Feb. 2019.

“The Whiteness of the Whale: Black Lightning and Semiotic Reversal.” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, 29 March 2018.

“Kryptonians Keep Kosher: Jews and Comic-Book Superheroes," first presented as an ����Vlog Distinguished Lecture (2018).

“‘The Only Nerdy Pakistani-American-Slash-Inhuman in the Entire Universe’: Post-Racialism and Politics in the New Ms. Marvel. (Part 2).” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, March 2016.

“We Are Who We Choose To Be”: Sadistic Choices, Forking Paths, and the Rejection of Narrative and Social Progress in Superhero Comics and Film.” University of Florida Comics Conference, 10-12 April 2015.

“Vigilantism, Superheroes, and Anti-Heroes” (community presentation at public library, 2015).

“‘They Are Real Beyond Refute’: Images of Fictionality in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell.” International Conference on Narrative, April 2011.

“Time and Free Will: Agency in Four Dimensions in the Graphic Novels of Alan Moore.” Center for Body, Mind, and Culture Coffee Colloquium, 23 March 2010.