The Disability Studies Program welcomes José Alaniz as the new Director. 

José Alaniz is an associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Comparative Literature (adjunct). He published his first book, Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of Mississippi), in 2010. The second, Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (UPM), will appear in November 2014. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Comic Art, the Comics Journal, Ulbandus, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, the Slavic and East European Journal, Comics Forum and Kinokultura, as well as such anthologies as The Ages of Superman: Essays on the Man of Steel in Changing Times (McFarland, 2012), The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov (I.B. Tauris, 2011) and Russian Children’s Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2007). He is currently the Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF), the leading comics studies conference in the US. His research interests include Death and Dying, Disability Studies, Film Studies, Eco-criticism and Comics Studies. His current projects include a study of disability in alternative European and US comics, as well as a history of Czech comics.

In the 2014-15 academic year he is slated to teach C LIT 497/RUSS 423: Disability in Russian Cinema (Autumn) and DIS ST 430: Disability in Graphic Narrative (Winter)

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