PhD Waterloo
MA Lakehead
HBA Lakehead
Email: jademan@uwaterloo.ca
Biography
I specialize in the comics medium (graphic novels, comics, manga, etc) and professional communications. Despite being born, raised, and (mostly) educated two hours from the sub-tundra in Thunder Bay, Ontario, I am deeply enamored with the life of good books, good art, and exceptional international foods that the Waterloo community and the University in particular provides for me. Having an enriching space to cultivate my research and teaching amongst open-minded people that I value and admire is everything to me and I equally delight in raising my children in such a space/culture/community. As a scholar, I find myself drawn to emerging fields, texts, and authors, with a philosophy that takes “if it moves you, its art” as the first step. The second step is figuring out how and why. As an instructor, my class is built around the presumption that everyone deserves to feel safe and everyone deserves to feel valued, in that order.
Selected Publications
Chris Claremont. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2025.
The Claremont Run: Subverting Gender in the X-Men. Austin: UTexasP, 2023.
The Margins of Comics: The Construction of Women, Minorities, and the Geek in Graphic Narrative. Toronto: Nuada Press, 2015.
“A Storm of Passion: Sexual Agency and Symbolic Capital in the X-Men’s Storm.” Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero. Ed. Anna Peppard. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020.
"Oh Well": Julie Doucet and the (Counter) Discourse of Conquest." Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives. Ed. Candida Rifkind & Linda Warley. Waterloo: WLU Press, 2016.
“The Intervening ‘I’: Phoebe Gloeckner’s Comics Memoir and the Destruction of Visual Pleasure.” American Visual Memoir after the 1970s: Gender, Sexuality and Visibility in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Ed. Mihaela H. Precup. Bucharest: U Press, 2010, pp. 155-166.
“The True North: Superman and Symbolic Patriation in We Stand on Guard.” The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature. 2025.
Deman, J. Andrew. “‘Iyashikei’ healing manga comforts readers with attention to small joys.” The Conversation, 1 Oct 2024.
Deman, J. Andrew. “Vanities.” ComicsXF, 12 Jul 2022.
Deman, J. Andrew. “Youth-oriented comics with LGBTQ+ positive characters are busting binaries.” The Conversation, 16 May 2022.
Fellowships and Awards
- SSHRC IDG (2025-2029)
- SSHRC IDRG (2018-2020)
- Jack Gray Graduate Fellowship (2006)
- Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work for The Claremont Run: Subverting Gender in the X-Men (2024)
- Warren G. Ober Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student in the Faculty of Arts (2008)
- UW Graduate Creative Writing Award (x4) (2004-2006)
- Isaak Book Prize (2003)
Current Research
My main project at the moment is “Sequential Scholars,” a SSHRC funded, public-facing project that seeks to bring comics scholarship to social media platforms in a variety of media formats. Beyond that, I’m also working on my 4th manuscript which looks at the subversive portrayal of BDSM sub-culture in Chris Claremont’s X-Men comics, tentatively titled “The Claremont Kink.” I’m also continuing to cultivate expertise in manga and anime studies, including a successful podcast on Sexuality and Gender in Manga.
Research Areas
- Graphic Narrative
- Comics
- Manga
- Anime