McMaster University

Graduate Student, English and Cultural Studies

Other Affiliations: Brock University, Communications, Popular Culture & Film
Conestoga College, Liberal Studies and Communications

About

I am a PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies at McMaster University where I study and write about speculative fiction, frameworks of knowledge and cultural imagination.

My research and teaching primarily focuses on popular culture, contemporary media, communications, and writing. I work with popular and postmodern narratives in print, film, and television (especially science fiction and fantasy), and representations of and ideas about science and technology. I also study popular music (particularly metal music) and  music cultures.

Theoretically speaking, my research is informed by recent work in critical posthumanism and the posthumanities and related and/or intersecting frameworks (feminisms, critical race theory, postcolonialisms, critical animal studies, critical disability studies). I am also interested in theories of genre. 

I have published (as Laura Wiebe Taylor) essays on science fiction and metal music, dystopia and heavy metal, popular music and film, and commercial radio and local popular culture. My work can be found in several anthologies, including _The Everyday Fantastic_ (Ed. Michael Berman, Cambridge Scholars), _British Heavy Metal_ (Ed. Gerd Bayer, Ashgate), _Terror Tracks_ (Ed. Philip Hayward, Equinox), and _Covering Niagara_ (Eds Barry Grant and Joan Nicks, WLU Press).

In addition to my academic work I also write music reviews and interviews (and occasionally feature articles and opinion pieces) for print and online publication. For more than 12 years I volunteered in campus radio, hosting my own on-air program, and I maintain an interest in exploring the role and significance of alternative media, especially radio, in the twenty-first century.