Josefine Smith is an associate professor and instruction & assessment librarian at Shippensburg University. Smith received the John S. Patterson Award for Academic Excellence in American Studies. Her research centers on the relationship between consuming information impacts identity development and gender norm construction. She has presented research on gender construction in popular fiction and in popular animated series, and is in the process of publishing two journal articles on gender in New Adult fiction, a subgenre of romance, and gender representation in the animated series Masters of the Universe: Revelation. Smith also researches learning and information literacy, and relationships between student identity and their research self-efficacy in the field of librarianship. Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in Media and Communication, Women and Gender Studies, and American Studies at Miami University in Ohio. As a graduate student, Kollman received the inaugural Roberta Gellis Memorial Paper Award at the 2018 Reading the Romance conference for her work on feminist themes in vampire paranormal romance novels. She will also cover romance novels extensively in her forthcoming monograph on representations of female U.S. presidents in film, television, and literature. Kollman serves as the Area Chair for Gender Studies at the Midwest Popular Culture conference. She writes novels which straddle the line between speculative and romance fiction.
