Jessica Baldanzi

I teach English, Writing, CORE, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Global Education classes here at GC. My research specialty is comics and graphic novels, and I publish in a range of genres, from poetry to flash memoir to blogs to literary criticism.

I am also involved in Goshen’s local arts scene: my poem “”Galaxies”” was published in the 2024 Goshen Printmakers’ Guild letterpress calendar, and I read my work yearly since 2020 at Summer Solstice Speaks at the Goshen Theater.

B.A., Northwestern University, 1992
M.A., Indiana University Bloomington, 1997
Ph.D., Indiana University Bloomington, 2003

Professional Memberships: Comics Studies Society, Modern Language Association

Recent certifications: Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program training, Association of Online and University Educators training for Effective Teaching Practices

My book Bodies and Boundaries: Female and Nonbinary Characters in Graphic Fiction came out in paperback in January 2024. The book is part of the Routledge Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Comics series, edited by Frederik Byrn Kohlert.
My poetry, fiction, and flash memoir can be found in the literary journals Exposition Review, Two Thirds North, Booth, and The Shore.

I also co-edited (with Hussein Rashid) a book of scholarly essays on the Kamala Khan version of Ms. Marvel called Ms. Marvel’s America: No Normal, University Press of Mississippi, 2020.

I also blog about comics at commonscomics.com.

My experimental fiction piece “”Space Planning Proposal for My Brain”” was nominated for Best of the Net and the O’Henry Prize.

I am grateful for multiple campus grants, most recently to attend the Indiana University Writers’ Conference (2025) to study with Safia Elhillo; to visit Northern Ireland to prepare for a class I led there in 2024; and to present my work in progress about the comics artists Thi Bui and Lucy Knisely at the International Comic Arts Forum in Vancouver (2023).