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 media and cultural studies, surveillance studies, and gender and sexuality studies. His work focuses on representations of trans/queer communities in popular culture and legal and political discourse against the backdrop of the increasingly digital, mediated, and surveilled cultural economy. Zane’s scholarship has been published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, Communication Teacher, and the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. He has presented his work at the annual conventions of the National Communication Association, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 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 a multimedia artist and practitioner. His film, photography, and creative writing addresses material themes about the body and place with a focus on issues of sexuality, social class, and their intersections. Zane’s film and photography 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 and research associate in the Department of Communication at USF and a graduate instructional assistant of communication education in USF’s College of Engineering, as well as the Vice-Chair for the Graduate Student Committee of NCA’s Activism and Social Justice Division. Additionally, he is in his second year as a Frederic Bastiat Fellow at the Mercatus Center for Social, Economic, and Political Thought, as well as an alumnus of the Mercatus Center’s Don Lavoie Fellowship. He holds a Master’s degree in Communication from USF and a Bachelor’s degree 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, Sexuality, Gender, Popular Culture, Cultural Economy

Advisor

Aisha Durham