Successful Defense of Doctoral Dissertation!

On Friday (3/24/2023), Kyle Hammonds met with his dissertation committee - Dr.s Eric M. Kramer, Lindsey Meeks, Norman Wong, Sean O'Neill, and Man-Fung Yip - to defend for PhD status. The dissertation defense was successful, resulting in the committee conferring a doctorate of philosophy.

Dr. Hammonds' dissertation is titled "An American Knightmare: Joker, Fandom, and Malicious Movie Meaning-Making." The study examines ways that virtual white nationalist groups have coopted the Movie Review speech genre to share hateful messages in seemingly innocuous ways. White nationalist fan responses to Todd Phillips' film Joker (2019) was used as a centralized example of the speech cooption phenomenon throughout the project. The results of the study detail a Joker-attitude adopted by malicious movie fans as a framework for poaching, transforming, and spreading spiteful ideology through mundane movie talk. The dissertation is under contract to be published as a book with Rowman & Littlefield in Fall 2023.

Having completed his dissertation defense, Dr. Hammonds is looking forward to expanding his research on fan communication. Projects in this line are already underway, with planned conference presentations throughout this coming Summer and Fall - including a presentation about transhumanism in superhero media for the annual popular culture conference as Bowling Green State University.

Dr. Hammonds is currently teaching classes on Public Speaking and Film & Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma, as well as Communication & Mythic Media for Mid-America Christian University.