My work examines how media entertainment and its audiences interact, and examines how and where value and meaning are created. More specifically, my research projects fall into one or more of the following areas: (1) textual theory, criticism, and analysis, (2) contemporary television studies, (3) new media extensions of and convergence with television and film, (4) satire, comedy, parody, and political entertainment, (5) international media consumption, and (6) qualitative audience studies, fandom, dislike, and anti-fandom.
My first book, Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality, used The Simpsons to examine how audiences consume with a whole barrage of other images and structures learned from other items of media. This interest in how meaning and impact are constructed outside of the film or show itself extended to Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, about the vast universe of paratextual or “peripheral” items that