Graduate Students

Zane Austin Willard

CV

Contact Information

Email
Office: CIS 3018

Website: www.zaneaustinwillard.me

biography

Zane Austin Willard is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida. His research and teaching interests are in critical cultural studies, digital and new media studies, and queer theory and gender and sexuality studies. Analyzing popular culture (reality TV, film, television, popular press, social media) and legal and political discourse (news media, public policy), his work examines surveillance culture and emphasizes the racialized, classed, and gendered dimensions of surveillance in the neoliberal state and techno-culture. Zane’s scholarship has been published in Communication, Culture, and Critique, the Journal of Communication Inquiry, Communication Teacher, the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and Feminist Pedagogy. He has presented his scholarship at the annual conventions of the National Communication Association, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, International Trans Studies Association, Southern States Communication Association, and the Florida Communication Association.

Committed to a critical praxis that extends theoretical inquiry into creative expression as cultural commentary, Zane is also a multimedia artist. His film, photography, and creative writing addresses material themes about the body and place with an emphasis on issues of gender, sexuality, and social class, and prompts discussions about aesthetics, materiality, affect, and new media and digital art. Zane’s creative work has been exhibited in gallery shows and film festivals in New York, Toronto, Tampa, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Fort Collins, and in virtual exhibitions.

Currently, Zane is a graduate teaching associate in the Department of Communication at USF and a graduate instructional assistant of communication education in USF’s College of Engineering. Outside of USF, Zane is as Vice-Chair for the Graduate Student Committee of NCA’s Activism and Social Justice Division, a Graduate Student Affiliate of the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill and an Elinor Ostrom Fellow at the Mercatus Center for Social, Economic, and Political Thought at George Mason University. He is also a two-time alumnus of the Mercatus Center’s Frederic Bastiat Fellowship and a former Don Lavoie Fellow. He earned his Master’s in Communication from USF and his Bachelor’s from the University of Tampa with a triple major in Economics, Communication, and Film & Media Arts and minors in History and Cinema Studies.

Research areas

Critical Cultural Studies, Surveillance, Digital and New Media, Queer Theory, Popular Culture, Political Discourse, Gender, Sexuality, Race

Advisor

Aisha Durham