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Faculty Profile

Greg Steirer

Associate Professor of English and Film Studies (2013)

Contact Information

steirerg@dickinson.edu

East College Room 402
717-254-8095

Bio

Professor Steirer's teaching and research interests include communication, film and television, media industries, comic books, journalism, video games, print publishing, digital culture, and intellectual property law. He is the author of The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood, written with Alisa Perren (UT Austin). He has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2017-2018 in support of his monograph on intellectual property law and the history of the narrative-based franchise, to be published by University of Michigan Press in late 2023. His most recent scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the journal Media, Culture and Society, as well as the collections Keywords for Comics Studies, the Routledge Companion to Media Industries, From Networks to Netflix (2nd edition), and the Sage Handbook of the Digital Media Economy.

Education

  • B.A. University of Pennsylvania, 2001
  • Ph.D., 2010

2023-2024 Academic Year

Fall 2023

ENGL 101 American Television
Cross-listed with FMST 220-01.For most of the twentieth century-and arguably still today-American television has functioned as a form of "public sphere," in which contemporary debates about race, class, gender, and sexuality were represented through visual and narrative forms. In this course we will examine television from institutional, aesthetic, social, and historical perspectives so as to understand its role in the negotiation of cultural change and identity. Attention will be given to traditional broadcast television and cable as well as more recent streaming television platforms, such as Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+.

ENGL 101 American Television
Cross-listed with FMST 220-02.For most of the twentieth century-and arguably still today-American television has functioned as a form of "public sphere," in which contemporary debates about race, class, gender, and sexuality were represented through visual and narrative forms. In this course we will examine television from institutional, aesthetic, social, and historical perspectives so as to understand its role in the negotiation of cultural change and identity. Attention will be given to traditional broadcast television and cable as well as more recent streaming television platforms, such as Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+.

FMST 220 American Television
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-04.For most of the twentieth century-and arguably still today-American television has functioned as a form of "public sphere," in which contemporary debates about race, class, gender, and sexuality were represented through visual and narrative forms. In this course we will examine television from institutional, aesthetic, social, and historical perspectives so as to understand its role in the negotiation of cultural change and identity. Attention will be given to traditional broadcast television and cable as well as more recent streaming television platforms, such as Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+.

FMST 220 American Television
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-05.For most of the twentieth century-and arguably still today-American television has functioned as a form of "public sphere," in which contemporary debates about race, class, gender, and sexuality were represented through visual and narrative forms. In this course we will examine television from institutional, aesthetic, social, and historical perspectives so as to understand its role in the negotiation of cultural change and identity. Attention will be given to traditional broadcast television and cable as well as more recent streaming television platforms, such as Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+.

ENGL 403 Meth/Models of Lit Schol
In preparation for the writing of the senior thesis, this course aims to help students develop an advanced understanding of the practice of research in literary studies and related disciplines. Over the course of the semester, we will explore how research has been conceptualized at different periods in history, by practitioners of different institutional affiliation, and at different junctures in the evolution of literary studies as a discipline. In exploring these issues, we will also query the concepts of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity themselves, in part by applying them to students’ own research ideas. By the end of the course, students will have developed an advanced understanding of what scholarly research is, how to practice it, and what it ultimately is for. Primary texts will be determined based upon students’ interests and prospective thesis topics.

ENGL 500 Independent Study

FMST 500 Independent Study

Spring 2024

ENGL 101 Storytelling Across Media
Cross-listed with FMST 220-03. As human beings, we encounter stories everywhere: not only in literature, comic books, and film; but also in our myths and religions, our personal and national histories, our career plans, and our politics-even our everyday conversations. Almost all aspects of social life, in fact, depend upon storytelling, a fact that has led some theorists to suggest that the ability to create and understand stories is one of the defining features of human beings as a species. But how does storytelling work? What are its underlying rules and structures? And how do stories differ across different media? This course will introduce students to the study of storytelling (sometimes called narratology) through the examination of stories in multiple media, including literature, film, and video games.

ENGL 101 Storytelling Across Media
Cross-listed with FMST 220-04. As human beings, we encounter stories everywhere: not only in literature, comic books, and film; but also in our myths and religions, our personal and national histories, our career plans, and our politics-even our everyday conversations. Almost all aspects of social life, in fact, depend upon storytelling, a fact that has led some theorists to suggest that the ability to create and understand stories is one of the defining features of human beings as a species. But how does storytelling work? What are its underlying rules and structures? And how do stories differ across different media? This course will introduce students to the study of storytelling (sometimes called narratology) through the examination of stories in multiple media, including literature, film, and video games.

FMST 220 Storytelling Across Media
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-05. As human beings, we encounter stories everywhere: not only in literature, comic books, and film; but also in our myths and religions, our personal and national histories, our career plans, and our politics-even our everyday conversations. Almost all aspects of social life, in fact, depend upon storytelling, a fact that has led some theorists to suggest that the ability to create and understand stories is one of the defining features of human beings as a species. But how does storytelling work? What are its underlying rules and structures? And how do stories differ across different media? This course will introduce students to the study of storytelling (sometimes called narratology) through the examination of stories in multiple media, including literature, film, and video games.

FMST 220 Storytelling Across Media
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-06. As human beings, we encounter stories everywhere: not only in literature, comic books, and film; but also in our myths and religions, our personal and national histories, our career plans, and our politics-even our everyday conversations. Almost all aspects of social life, in fact, depend upon storytelling, a fact that has led some theorists to suggest that the ability to create and understand stories is one of the defining features of human beings as a species. But how does storytelling work? What are its underlying rules and structures? And how do stories differ across different media? This course will introduce students to the study of storytelling (sometimes called narratology) through the examination of stories in multiple media, including literature, film, and video games.

ENGL 404 Senior Thesis Workshop
A workshop requiring students to share discoveries and problems as they produce a lengthy manuscript based on a topic of their own choosing, subject to the approval of the instructor.Prerequisites: 403.