As we wrap up another year of our Schoenecke Institute program, we celebrate our outgoing class of Fellows in a special Spotlight!
Meet Keaton, who recently completed his masters at Cleveland State University!
📍 When/how did you first participate in SWPACA?
I got my undergrad degree at Adams State University where Dr. King was teaching. She told us she would be going away for a week given her involvement with the conference and a small group of my friends got together and researched it and decided it would be a fun experience to go as we had never even heard of an academic conference. We stayed up one night at my dorm room making a “wish list” of papers we wanted to hear.
📍 How did you initially become interested in popular/American culture studies?
I’ve always been invested in popular culture in practically a sound effect box. I am constantly quoting pop culture so I thought eventually I should make some academic progress off of it.
📍 What is your current research and how has participating at SWPACA helped shape or enhance your work?
I recently just finished my master thesis on the idea of queerness as being an ostriched undefineable quality in society, rather than needing actual homosexual acts, and how there are Foucault and Butler like power dynamics that come from this queer culture. A lot of the texts I used such as Twilight and Hitchcock films were given to me from ideas I had while either listening to other papers or discussed in roundtables.
📍 How has being a Fellow contributed to your professional growth or sense of direction as a scholar?
The number one way I’d say being a fellow has helped me professionally would have to be through connections. The amount of important people I’ve gotten to talk to just via natural conservation has helped me a lot in networking, and understanding a lot of the red tape in academia.
📍 What is your current pop culture recommendation?
My current pop culture obsession would have to be Rocky Horror Picture Show, and should prove as a time stamp of what time of year I’m writing this. The culture and gender bending performances that recur every year around this film as well as just the history of how the film was made, and all the small details surrounding the art in the background just make it such a fascinating concept to me.
📢 Be a part of our next cohort of Schoenecke Fellows! Applications are due December 1, 2025.
