Dr. Julie McCown is an Associate Professor of English at Southern Utah University. She received her Ph.D. in English from University of Texas at Arlington in 2016 and her M.A in English from University of Texas of the Permian Basin in 2011. Her teaching and research interests are wide-ranging and include early American literature, women writers, queer literatures, and digital humanities/media theory. She also discovered a previously unknown poem by the 18th-century African American poet Jupiter Hammon, which introduced her to the wonders of archival research. Her recent publications have been about early African American literature, nineteenth-century American poetry, and nineteenth-century women’s periodicals. Her current research focuses generative artificial intelligence (AI) and how to critically and ethically incorporate AI into First-Year Composition.

Dr. Scott C. Knowles is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at Southern Utah University. He received an MA from Florida State University and a PhD from the University of Kansas. His dissertation, Dystopian Performatives: Negative Affect/Emotion in the Work of Sarah Kane focused on the performative impact of violent scenes from Kane’s work on the affect/emotion of an audience. He has presented this work along with research focused on race, gender, directing, and dramaturgy at conferences such as the American Society for Theatre Research, The Mid-America Theatre Conference, Theatre Symposium, and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. He has published work with both Theatre Journal and in A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage. His directing work focuses primarily on theatre for social change, working to involve audiences, company, and community in issues beyond the walls of the theatre through a variety of outreach approaches. In 2017, Scott was awarded SUU’s Distinguished Faculty for Inclusion and Diversity Award based on his work with The Laramie Project.