Faculty Profile for Whitney Shylee May
Biography Section
Biography and Education
Whitney S. May, MA, is a lecturer for the Department of English at Texas State University and a doctoral student in the American Studies program at the University of Texas. Her primary research interests include the Gothic and nineteenth-century horror literature, as well as depictions of the carnivalesque in horror fiction and in popular culture. Her recent work has been published in Gothic Studies, Supernatural Studies, and The Edgar Allan Poe Review, as well as Representing Kink: Fringe Sexuality and Textuality in Literature, Digital Narrative, and Popular Culture (Lexington Books, 2019) and Circus Space: The Big Top on the Big Screen (McFarland Press, 2020).Selected Scholarly/Creative Work
- May, W. S. (2023). “The Way the Cookie Doubles: Cripping the Cyber-Gothic of Black Mirror’s AI Tech.” In Humanity in a Black Mirror: Essays on Posthuman Fantasies in a Technological Near Future (pp. 48–68). Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press. Retrieved from https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/humanity-in-a-black-mirror/
- May, W. S. (2022). Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King’s IT. Jackson, Mississippi, United States: University Press of Mississippi. Retrieved from https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/E/Encountering-Pennywise
- May, W. S. (2021). “Powers of Their Own Which Mere ‘Modernity’ Cannot Kill”:The Doppelgänger and Temporal Modernist Terror in Dracula. Gothic Studies, 23(1), 60–76. https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2021.0078
- May, W. S. (2021). “Topophilic Perversions: Spectral Blackface and Fetishizing Sites of Monstrosity in American Dark Tourism.” In Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Gods and Monsters (pp. 157–167). Lanham, Maryland, United States: Lexington Books.
- May, W. S. (2020). The Lioness and the Protector: The (Post)Feminist Dialogic of Tamora Pierce’s Lady Knights. Children’s Literature, 48, 51–79.
Selected Awards
- Award / Honor Recipient: Nontenure-Line Faculty Workload Release, Texas State University. December 2022 - May 2024
- Award / Honor Nominee: Best Edited Collection of 2022, Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association. November 2022
- Award / Honor Nominee: Presidential Excellence Award, Texas State University Department of English. November 2021 - February 2022
- Award / Honor Nominee: Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award, The Children's Literature Association. November 2021
Selected Service Activities
University Mentor
Bobcat Bond
September 2016-Present
University Mentor
Foster Care Alumni Creating Educational Success
October 1, 2015-Present
Advisory Board Member: Adjunct Representative
Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts
October 2018-October 2022
Faculty Sponsor
Texas State Anime Club
October 2019-December 2020
Faculty Sponsor
Summoners of Texas State
September 2017-May 2019