Brian Johnston

I am excited and happy about life, and I invite you to reach out and start a conversation with me about music, film, higher education and teaching (Brian.Johnston@glenville.edu).

I am Assistant Professor of Communication in the Department of Language & Literature at Glenville State University. My research interests include rhetorical and (auto)ethnographic approaches to the study of media and media audiences, identity markers, public memory, and culture.

You can check out my article examining live performances of U2's iconic "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" entitled "Haunted Spaces" (Journal of Communications Media Studies, 2015) @ https://libertasweb.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/haunted-spaces.pdf. My work also appears in the Journal of Autoethnography ("Breathe," 2021), and The Routledge International Handbook of Organizational Autoethnography (Framing Stories from the Academic Margins, 2020). In 2016, I created and launched an Open (free) Education Resource textbook, Introduction to Public Communication that today saves nearly $1-million in annual student costs across mulitiple universities. I am passionately committed to open education resources as a sustainable social justice project that saves students' costs, strengthens academic freedom, and encourages collaborative teaching-learning practices.

When I'm not teaching or writing I enjoy hiking, photography, carpentry, and riffling bad movies with my children.

Thank you for your interest in the U2 book! Visit the book's website for a deeper dive into its themes of myth, love, and liminality @ u2mythos.com.