about

Mandy Elizabeth Moore (she/her/hers) earned her PhD in English at the University of Florida in 2024. She also has a BA in English from Hollins University 2016 and an MA in English with a concentration in Children’s Literature from Kansas State University, along with a graduate certificate in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.

Mandy’s research combines theoretical frameworks from posthumanism, rhetoric and composition, and media studies, which she deploys to examine nonhuman and more-than-human agency in film, television, fan communities, children’s media, and popular culture. Her dissertation develops and demonstrates a new materialist rhetorical methodology for fan studies that allows us to follow nonhuman entities, tracking how fandom “things” interact with humans and each other to effect change. She has also studied and published on films and television shows including Steven Universe, Sense8, The LEGO Movie, The 100, Supergirl, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. As a queer, neurodivergent scholar, she is particularly committed to exploring the complex ways that media shape, reflect, and co-constitute our various identities, along with how that process can challenge or perpetuate harmful systems of power.

As an instructor, Mandy strives to center her students as full, complex humans whose everyday lives are not separate from their classroom presence. She works to create syllabi that decenter Western canons of texts and thought, making questions of hegemony and power central to her courses. Regardless of course topic, her goals involve asking students to see nuance and the possibility of multiple truths coexisting at once, to take agency over their own writing and learning, and to consider how both discursive and material histories have shaped the media we encounter today. Recently, she has been experimenting with forms of “ungrading” in hopes of creating more enriching and equitable classes.

She currently lives in Gainesville, FL, with her cat Bellamy (@bellamybabie on Instagram) and way too many books. She’s (occasionally) on Twitter as @mandybethmoore. You can also contact her via email at mandymoore@ufl.edu.