Featured Faculty
Daniel Worden
School of Individualized Study
DANIEL WORDEN IS AN AWARD-WINNING SCHOLAR OF AMERICAN CULTURE. IN HIS WORK, HE SEEKS TO UNDERSTAND HOW ART, COMICS, FILM, LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND TELEVISION EMERGE FROM, REFLECT, AND ENVISION POSSIBILITIES BEYOND THEIR ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL MOMENTS. IN RECENT YEARS, HE HAS WRITTEN ABOUT HOW COMICS HAVE A UNIQUE AESTHETIC HISTORY THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM THE RELATED HISTORIES OF FINE ART AND LITERATURE, THE ROLES THAT DOCUMENTARY FILMS AND LITERARY JOURNALISM HAVE PLAYED IN THE EMERGENCE OF ENVIRONMENTALIST POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES, AND THE CULTURAL STYLES THAT EMERGED IN THE 1960S AND 1970S ALONGSIDE THE NEOLIBERAL IDEOLOGY OF THE FREE MARKET.
Daniel Worden’s recent publications, grants, and conference presentations are all a part of three larger research projects. The first is a book-length work about documentary aesthetics across media, and how documentary forms have represented neoliberal tactics such as privatization, criminalization, and dispossession. The second is an edited volume about the comics of Robert Crumb, one of the most iconic and controversial cartoonists of the 20th and 21st centuries. This volume will seek to provide the first comprehensive, well-rounded account of Crumb’s comics, his role in the art world, and the thorny political and social dimensions of his work. Finally, he is at work on a new book-length project that seeks to document the connections, both literal and thematic, between the modern medium of comics and modern energy culture, consolidated around petroleum.
Daniel Worden values the ability to write not just for academic venues, but also for broader public sites as well. In 2018, he co-curated an exhibit of the comics art of RIT alum Adam Kubert, at RIT’s Cary Graphic Arts Collection, and he continued to write for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Ranging from comics studies and cultural studies, to economic policy and climate change, Daniel Worden strives to make visible how the humanities can contribute not just to academic understandings of our time, but also to public conversations about what matters to us today.
Daniel Worden
Assistant Professor
School of Individualized Study