Jason D. DeHart earned a PhD in 2019 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research interests include digital literacy, graphic novels and comics, and adolescent literacy. DeHart is the author of Building Critical Literacy and Empathy with Graphic Novels (NCTE). Suriati Abas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Elementary Education and Reading at the State University of New York (SUNY) Oneonta. Her research interests center on critical, multimodal, and spatial literacies within school and in out-of-school contexts. Her most recent publications titled "Critical Multimodal Literacy Practices in Student-Created Comics" and "Fostering Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy in Higher Education" were published in Literacy and Teaching Media , respectively. Suriati was awarded the Divergent Award for Excellence in the Implementation of Literacy in a Digital Age in 2022 for the university-community partnership (i.e., involving pre-service teachers, teachers, authors, librarians, and children in K-12 schools) in promoting diverse social justice-themed picture books through in-person book-reading events and digital platforms. She teaches literacy, diversity, and children's literature to pre-service and in-service teachers. Raúl Alberto Mora is an Associate Professor at the School of Education and Pedagogy at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia (while teaching remotely from Norway), where he also chairs the award-winning Literacies in Second Languages Project research lab. He is also a visiting professor at the Doctorate in Education (ELT Emphasis) at Universidad del Valle and has served as visiting faculty at universities in Colombia, Mexico, and Poland. His research has explored literacy theories' conceptual and practical applications to understand second-language practices in city, virtual, and school spaces. Raúl was awarded the Divergent Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research in 2019 for his contributions to the field of literacy studies and the Clare de Silva Award by the Colombian Association of English Teachers (ASOCOPI) in 2024 for his impact on the English-language teaching community in Colombia. Damiana Gibbons Pyles is a Professor in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum at Appalachian State University. Her research interests focus on media production, identity, and media literacy practices in order to understand the intersections of the visual, the spoken, the written, and the performed in digital and print literacies. Recent publications include her book Literacy and Identity through Streaming Media: Kids, Teens, and Representation on Netflix (2023) and several publications, such as scholarship about turning Red and Asian American representation and teaching using different media, i.e., The Last Kids on Earth. She currently teaches courses for pre-service and practicing teachers to learn how to integrate media and technology for teaching and learning. Her most recent projects focus on how censorship legislation is impacting how teachers perceive how they can and should teach in their classrooms.
