Brendan Riley - Columbia College Chicago

Brendan Riley

Associate Professor

briley@colum.edu

Biography

Brendan joined the English faculty in Fall 2004. He teaches writing, new media, and cultural studies classes, as well as a j-session course called “Zombies in Popular Media.” He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida, where he studied film and media studies as well as rhetoric and composition. Brendan's research interests include: writing, new media, popular culture studies, detective fiction, board games, and zombies.

Brendan has written a number of essays for print and online publications on a variety of subjects, from superhero comics to rhetoric in the digital age. His latest work, The Digital Age Detective: Mysteries in a Changing Landscape of Literacy was published in 2017 by McFarland press. He serves on the executive board of the Midwest Popular Culture Association, and served as the Executive Director of Operations for the Popular Culture Association from 2013-2018.

On the creative side, Brendan is part of a game design collective called Rattlebox games, which successfully kickstarted its first game in November of 2015, and merged with XYZ Game Labs in 2021. He also dabbles in web application programming and content-management systems. He maintains a website at http://www.curragh-labs.org/

Instructional Areas

Writing Composition New Media Internet Studies Popular Culture Mystery / Detectives Science Fiction Zombies Board Games

Creative Practice and Research Interests

Writing Composition New Media Internet Studies Popular Culture Mystery / Detectives Science Fiction Zombies Board Games

Degrees

B.A., English Saitn John's University 1999
M.A., English University of Florida 2001
Ph.D., English University of Florida 2004