I am an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communications at The University of Winnipeg, where I teach courses on Communication Theory, Popular Culture, Critical Theories of Discourse and Ideology, and Critical Studies of Social Media. I also teach Cultural Theory in the MA program in Cultural Studies, and supervise Directed Readings and Special Studies courses on cultural/critical theory, media and communication theory, film and popular culture, social media, videogames, and cyberpunk culture.

I am a Faculty Researcher affiliated with the Centre for Research in Cultural Studies (CRiCS) at The University of Winnipeg. I am an Editorial Board member for the journals Rethinking Marxism and TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.

I am currently working on a project funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2020-2022) called “The Hysterical Sublime: A Critical Study of the Aesthetics, Rhetorics, and Ethics of New Materialist and Posthumanist Critical Theory.” Through a critical response to New Materialist and Posthumanist critical theory, this project aims to develop a renewed conception of dialectical humanism.

My most recent book, Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (Northwestern UP 2021), uses the concept of social media as a metaphor for interpreting the dominant ideology and consciousness of contemporary neoliberal capitalism.

My previous books include Postmodern Theory and Blade Runner (Bloomsbury 2017) and The Symbolic, The Sublime, and Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Film (Palgrave 2012). I am also the co-editor of Žižek and Media Studies: A Reader (Palgrave Macmillan 2014).

I have a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Communication and Culture from York University and Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), and a B.A. Honours Double Major in Fine Arts Cultural Studies and Communication Studies from York. I was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Research and Teaching Interests:

• Aesthetic Theory
• Communication and Media Theory
• Critical Theory and Cultural Studies (Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies)
• Critical Studies of Social Media
• Cyberpunk Culture
• Dialectical Criticism (Hegel and German Idealism)
• Digital Culture and New Media
• Film and Visual Culture
• French Cultural Theory (Existentialism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism)
• Humanism, Posthumanism, and New Materialism
• Ideology and Popular Culture
• Marxism and Marxist Theory
• Neoliberalism
• Psychoanalysis and Lacanian Theory
• Popular Culture
• Postmodernism
• Rhetoric, Ethics, and Ideology
• Žižek and the Slovenian School