Dru Pagliassotti, Ph.D.

About

"Dr. Dru" Pagliassotti teaches film theory, monster theory, comics creation and studies, website design, and content creation, and supervises student internships. They have also been faculty lead for the Oxford Program in Fall 2024 and will be again in Fall 2026, taking students to Oxford and teaching the course Imperial Ink, on imperialism and colonialism in comics. Dr. Dru's co-taught classes currently include ComicComm, an art/communication course on the history, sociology, and creation of comics and have included in the past an art/communication travel course Imagining Venice, which took students to Venice and Florence in 2011, 2013, and 2018, and the history/communication travel course Faces of India, which took students to India in 2006.

Dr. Dru's research interests revolve around the examination and analysis of representations of traditionally marginalized groups in popular media, which has included representations of portrayal of gender and sexuality in manga, fiction, and comics. They have also studied the use of generative AI (LLMs) by student newspaper editors and are currently working on a paper applying monster theory to popular characterizations of COVID-19 and recently finished a chapter about neo-Victorian comics. Dr. Dru's past research has examined the development and growing popularity of boys' love (yaoi) manga in the West, including a PLOS article that analyzes people's motives for reading yaoi that was co-written with researchers in Hungary. 

Dr. Dru served as the Communication Department's chair from 2013-2019 and headed the task force that shifted CLU's faculty governance from a full-faculty assembly model to a Faculty Senate/Faculty Assembly model from 2018-2019. They are currently the founding secretary of CLU's advocacy chapter of the AAUP. Dr. Dru also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies.

Dr. Dru is the author of four novels and a number of short stories; owned and edited The Harrow, an online literary magazine for fantasy and horror, for 11.5 years; and ran The Harrow Press, a publisher of print horror anthologies, for seven years. Dru's past professional experience includes editorial work on print books, journals, and trade magazines; freelance website design; and serving as a content provider for a roleplaying games site on About.Com. Dr. Dru holds a black belt, plays Dungeons & Dragons, adores iguanas, and is currently struggling to learn Spanish.

Education

Ph.D., University of Southern California, Communication Theory & Research
M.A., University of Southern California, Communication Theory & Research
Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies, University of Southern California
B.A., University of California, Santa Barbara, Communication
B.A., University of California, Santa Barbara, Sociology

Publications

Forthcoming

Pagliassotti, D. (in press) Neo-Victorian Comics. Invited chapter for forthcoming volume: Kohlke, M.L. & Gutleben, C., Handbook of Neo-Victorianism, Brill.

Conference Proceedings

Hettinga, K., & Pagliassotti, D. (2025). Exploring the potential for AI editorial assistance in student newsrooms. Paper presented at the World Journalism Education Congress, San Francisco, California.

Peer-Reviewed Articles & Chapters

Zsila, À., Pagliassotti, D., Urbán, R., Orosz G., Királ, O., & Demetrovics, Z. (2018). Loving the love of boys: Motives for consuming yaoi media. PLOS-One, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198895.

Pagliassotti, D. (2017). “People Keep Giving Me Rings, but I Think a Small Death Ray Might Be More Practical”: Women and Mad Science in Steampunk Comics. Invited chapter for Kohlke, M.L. & Gutleben, C., Neo-Victorian Humour: The Rhetorics and Politics of Comedy, Irony and Parody, Rodopi Press.

Pagliassotti, D. (2012). Love and the Machine: Technology and Human Relationships in Steampunk Romance and Erotica. In Julie Anne Taddeo & Cynthia J. Miller (Eds). Steaming Into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Pagliassotti, D. (2009). GloBLisation and Hybridisation: Publishers’ Strategies for Bringing Boys’ Love to the United States. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific. 

(Vietnamese translation: TOÀN CẦU HÓA VÀ TIẾP BIẾN HÓA: NHỮNG CHIẾN LƯỢC MANG BOYS’LOVE ĐẾN HOA KỲ CỦA CÁC NHÀ XUẤT BẢN)

Pagliassotti, D. (November 2008). Reading Boys’ Love in the West. Particip@tions: International Journal of Audience Research.

Pagliassotti, D. (1993). On the discursive construction of sex and gender. Communication Research, 20(3), 472-493.

Edited Volumes

Levi, A., McHarry, M, & Pagliassotti, D. (Eds). (2010). Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co, Inc.

 Reviews & Editorials

Pagliassotti, D., Nagaike, K., & McHarry, M. (2013). Editorial, Special Section, Boys’ Love Manga (Yaoi). Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 4(1), pp. 1-8.

Pagliassotti, D. (2003). Gender and community in the social construction of the Internet (review). Information, Communication, and Society, 6(2), 272-274.

Conference Presentations

Hettinga, K., & Pagliassotti, D. (2025). Exploring the potential for AI editorial assistance in student newsrooms. Paper presented at the World Journalism Education Congress, San Francisco, California.

Pagliassotti, D. (2019, Feb 25). Fan Scholar Salon: The Future of Slash. Invited panelist at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC.

Pagliassotti, D. (2014, April 24). Appearing Steampunk: Neo-Victorian Aesthetics and Themes within La Cité des enfants perdus. Invited presentation at the Department of French and Francophone Languages at Macalester College.