Ryan Poll

Ryan Poll teaches in the English Department at Northeastern Illinois University where his research focuses on the intersection of aesthetics, ecology, and politics. His first book, Main Street and Empire: The Fictional Small Town in the Age of Globalization (Rutgers UP), examines how the fictional small town is used to frame normative narratives and bodies throughout the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st century. His latest book, Aquaman and the War against Oceans: Comics Activism and Allegory in the Anthropocene (U Nebraska P), reads Aquaman as an ecological hero and moreover, as an accessible figure for charting environmental violences endemic to global capitalism. Other publications include articles on Jordan Peele's Get Out, Bruce Springsteen, detective fiction, and the theater of genocide. He is also a staff writer at PopMatters.