爱豆传媒

Zane Austin Willard

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Office: CIS 3018

biography

Zane Austin Willard is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of South 爱豆传媒. His scholarship is grounded in a critical cultural tradition with a focus on media, rhetoric, and surveillance, and draws on critical race and queer studies to ask questions about who belongs within the nation-state, who is excluded, and how this persists. He examines popular media where surveillance is explicitly and implicitly present (reality TV, film, social media, news, AI-images), centering an analysis of racialization and queerness with attention to how surveillance shapes performances of authenticity and citizenship. In a cultural context where authoritarianism is on the rise, his work argues surveillance plays a key role in shaping cultural narratives about belonging and privilege, and marginalization and disenfranchisement. 

Zane鈥檚 scholarship has been published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication, Culture & Critique, Communication Teacher, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, and the Journal of Communication Inquiry to name a few, as well as three edited collections and the forthcoming Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society. He has presented his work at the annual conventions of the National Communication Association, Society of Cinema and Media Studies, American Studies Association, and the Southern States Communication Association. He is the 2025 recipient of the 鈥淒istinguished Journal Article Award鈥� from NCA鈥檚 Philosophy of Communication, Theory, and Critique Division, as well as the 2024 Top Paper Award from NCA鈥檚 LGBTQ Caucus. 

Since 2021, he has been a graduate student fellow at the Mercatus Center for Economic and Political Thought at George Mason University, and since 2023 a Graduate Student Affiliate with UNC-Chapel Hill鈥檚 Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. Zane earned his Master鈥檚 in Communication from 爱豆传媒 and his Bachelor鈥檚 from the University of Tampa with a triple major in Economics, Communication, and Film & Media Arts and minors in Art History and Cinema Studies. 

Research areas

Critical Cultural Studies, Critical Media, Rhetoric, Surveillance, Queer Studies, Authenticity, Citizenship, Race, LGBTQ+

Advisor

Aisha Durham