Jason Helms

Jason Helms
Jason Helms
Jason Helms camping photo

I'm Jason Helms, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Digital Expression at TCU. I teach courses on the history of rhetoric, multimedia authoring, visual rhetoric, podcasting, gaming, comics, rhetoric and philosophy, and writing writ large. Just like my teaching, my research covers some broad ground, but my focus is on the interplay of rhetoric and technology. That focus sheds light on what might seem like disparate interests.

This site is divided into four sections: Research, Teaching, CV, and Links. You can access them on the menu above. After scrolling down to each section, you can then move side to side within that section. Use the arrow icons or, on a phone or tablet, simply swipe.

Jason Helms
Jason Helms
Jason Helms camping photo

I'm Jason Helms, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Digital Expression at TCU. I teach courses on the history of rhetoric, multimedia authoring, visual rhetoric, podcasting, gaming, comics, rhetoric and philosophy, and writing writ large. Just like my teaching, my research covers some broad ground, but my focus is on the interplay of rhetoric and technology. That focus sheds light on what might seem like disparate interests.

This site is divided into four sections: Research, Teaching, CV, and Links. You can access them on the menu above. After scrolling down to each section, you can then move side to side within that section. Use the arrow icons or, on a phone or tablet, simply swipe.

Research
Diagram of my research areas

Diagram of my research areas

Scholarship is both rhetorical and technological. We often forget this because of our instrumental assumptions about rhetoric and technology. It is the nature of rhetoric and technology to be forgotten. My scholarship examines the ways rhetoric and technology obscure their operations and effects through a shared myth of transparency. This through-line developed over a few years pursuing distinct questions linked by specific concerns about the intersections of rhetoric and technology. Throughout this process, I experimented with scholarly modes, creating video games, animations, and comics, culminating in my digital monograph.

I tell my students that rhetoric is the how of communication. Most other disciplines start with the what; rhetoric understands the ways the how can shape or even obscure the what. Technology operates the same way, often obscuring its effects through usability. This how links everything even as it obscures itself. I started with the how of scholarship, with the ways research questions are constrained by the delivery medium of the scholarship. My earlier articles in Kairos, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and Itineration perform their arguments explicitly through animation, drawings, and interactivity. The process of critical making and new media itself can often be exclusionary, and my methodology articles (one on the DHQ special issue and one on Rhizcomics itself) aim to break down some of those barriers. In my current book project, I’m similarly showing the ways rhetoric and technology overlap to uphold systems of marginalization. 

My work has become more collaborative, more antiracist, more justice-oriented, and I expect that trend to continue over the next five to ten years. I’m part of a team of interdisciplinary scholars at TCU building a research center around video games. We’ve received several internal grants, culminating in a regional symposium on diversity in games. That symposium connected us with other scholars throughout DFW doing work around video games, who we will begin working with on national grant projects. I plan to focus more on critical making, to continue to expand our scholarly methods. I’ll be co-leading a workshop on critical making as scholarship at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute with Anastasia Salter next summer. Having attended DHSI before as a participant, I’ve found it to be an exciting intellectual center for interdisciplinary digital humanities work. I suspect my next few major projects will owe a great deal to the connections that opportunity creates. 

Digital Monograph

Rhizcomics Cover

Rhizcomics cover image.

Rhizcomics: Rhetoric, Technology, and New Media Composition.

Open Access digital monograph from the University of Michigan Press and Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, February 24, 2017.

My digital monograph, Rhizcomics: Rhetoric, Technology, and New Media Composition, was published by Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative and the University of Michigan Press. Rhizcomics is a digital monograph that composes multimodal arguments about rhetoric and comics. The book presents comics as a rhetorically complex medium capable of nuanced scholarly arguments. Relying on animation, drawing, video, interactivity, and text, Rhizcomics investigates presymbolic rhetoricity across comics and other media.

Andrea Lunsford wrote that Rhizcomics “demonstrates how fundamentally our visual and aural environments are shifting, deepening, become more and more richly layered—and [Helms] does so in a startlingly nonlinear way. In doing so, he challenges all of us who teach (as well as read and write) to join him in exploring this new landscape, and not only in our teaching but in our research and scholarship as well . . . prepare to be changed by it.” Rhizcomics performs its arguments, creating an alienation effect that highlights the ways traditional scholarship obscures its operations. As Lunsford notes, this is challenging for readers—deliberately so. But it is also engaging enough to be accessible to nonacademics.

In her review, Anastasia Salter writes that Rhizcomics “is a reminder of the value both comics and multimodal work like Helms’s offer to extending not only the scholarly gaze but the methods of scholarship.” Rhizcomics traces the ways traditional methods restrict research and shows some of the possibilities for extending those methods. While I found that readers were excited about extending methods, they often didn’t know where to start. My methodology article, Making Rhizcomics, offers practical, specific insights into the process of making a digital monograph and will likely be more valuable long term than the monograph itself. Critical making can be liberatory but it can also be exclusive. My methodology articles make new media scholarship practical and accessible, so that others can find a way into these exclusionary spaces.

Rhetoric is Technology

Rhetoric is Technology: Race, Resistance, Responsibility

Prospectus and sample chapters under review with MIT Press.

My current book project conceptualizes rhetoric and technology as a single phenomenon: technorhetoric. The modern technocratic state maintains itself and obscures its machinations by separating rhetoric from technology. Re-conceptualizing them as technorhetoric offers new opportunities for political resistance. Given the pace of innovation and political polarization, understanding technorhetoric is vital for resistance to the current forms of oppression we face and will face (particularly around automation, economics, and policing). While most scholars accept that rhetoric has technological aspects and that technology has rhetorical aspects, none have conceptualized technology and rhetoric as a single phenomenon.

The title may feel polemical: rhetoric is technology. Many colleagues I’ve spoken to initially misinterpret the argument: “rhetoric is technological and technology is rhetorical,” “technology is somewhat similar to rhetoric,” or “rhetoric and technology are the two most important areas in addressing oppression.” Technology is rhetoric. They’re the same phenomenon. And White supremacist neoliberal capitalism hides its operations by separating them, by keeping the technological distinct from the rhetorical. The shock of this central premise aims to break through those obscuring forces.

Work done around race and algorithms exemplify this temptation to separate technology from rhetoric. Google’s algorithm seems like a technology, so its racism requires technological solutions. Racism on Twitter seems rhetorical, so it requires rhetorical solutions. Yet these solutions always fall short, addressing only half of the problem in the attempt to fix.

This question of resistance leads to the outcome of the book: a detailed discussion of the ethics of technorhetoric and our shared responsibilities. While many books on rhetoric and technology address race, most either mention it as one issue among many or focus their attention on an individual example or collection of examples around race. By centering race as the example of technorhetoric, Rhetoric Is Technology, addresses the importance of the concept of race to any theory of rhetoric or technology while also moving at the more granular levels of application described in more focused studies. Instead of a simple positionality statement, I carefully examine my position as a White scholar throughout the analysis.

Articles

Research cartoon

“Play Smarter Not Harder: Developing Your Scholarly Meta.”
Scholarly and Research Communication.  Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019.

“Making Rhizcomics: Methodologies for Digital Monographs.”
Kairos, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2018.

“Potential Panels: Toward a Theory of Augmented Comics.”
All the World’s a Link: Perspectives on Augmented Reality across Art, Industry, and Academia. Editors: Sean Morey and John Tinnell. Parlor Press, 2017.

“Making Comics as Scholarship: A Reflection on the Process behind Digital Humanities Quarterly 9.4.”
Kairos, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2018. (third author)

“What If the Who Became the What: Bernard Stiegler Listens to Tommy.”
Part of a collection of multimodal scholarship on composition and pinball published in Itineration, February 2016. Republished in Hyperrhiz 22, 2020.

“Is This Article a Comic?”
Part of a special issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly on Comics as Scholarship. Vol. 9, No. 4, Fall 2015.

Vorhandenheit.
Interactive scholarship. Part of “MOMLA: from Panel to Gallery” published in Kairos, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2013.

“Helenistic Encomium.”
Kairos, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 2009.

“Miller's Tale.”
PRE/TEXT, Vol. 19, Nos. 1-4.

“The Task of the Name: A Reply to Carol Poster”
Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2008.




Talks

A lecture given at the Digital Frontiers Conference on how I made Rhizcomics.

My Distinguished Alumni Lecture given at Clemson University. From a section of my current book project.

Reviews

“Review of Discourse, Figure by Jean-François Lyotard.”
Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 46, No. 1, 2013.

Falling Man
RedFence, 2007.

Fragile Things
RedFence, 2007.

“Looking Forward, Looking Back”
A review of Omega the Unknown. RedFence, 2007.

Total Interaction
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2007.

Only Revolutions
RedFence, 2006.

“Readings and Rereadings”
A review of House of Leaves. RedFence, 2006.

Teaching
a photograph of a whiteboard with the various dates and tasks associated with Rhizcomics written on it

A photograph of a whiteboard with various rhetoricians and philosophers mapped out on it.


In this section you’ll find my teaching philosophy, sample syllabi, and some student work and interactions.

Teaching Philosophy

Under construction.

Under construction.

Sample Syllabi

Undergraduate

WRIT 20303 Writing Games: Gender and Sexuality in Video Games
A lower division course that teaches students to make Twine games that engage theories of gender and sexuality.

WRIT 20803 Writing as Inquiry
Our second year composition course. This is the summer version.

WRIT 30253 Rhetorical Traditions
An upper division rhetoric class, focusing on rhetoric and philosophy.

WRIT 30293 Non-Human Rhetorics
An upper-division rhetorical theory course on non-human rhetorics.

WRIT 40163 Multimedia Authoring: Image and Hypertext
An upper division technical communication course on web design and photo editing.

WRIT 40263 Multimedia Authoring: Animation and Film
An upper division technical communication course on HTML 5 animation.

WRIT 40463 Multimedia Authoring: Comics Production
An upper division technical communication course on comics and visual design.

Graduate

ENGL 50973 Visual Rhetoric, Graphic Novels and Comics
An graduat seminar on reading and making comics.

ENGL 60123 Introduction to Modern Critical Theory
A required graduate seminar on critical theory.

ENGL 80703 Digital Rhetorics
An graduate seminar focusing on the theories and practices of digital rhetoric.

ENGL 80703 Pop Culture and New Media
A graduate seminar on popular culture and new media.

ENGL 80703 Rhetoric and Technology
A graduate seminar on the relationship between rhetoric and technology with special attention to abolitionist approahes to technorhetoric.

Student work and interactions

Avatar Emergency wiki
A collaborative wiki on Greg Ulmer's book Avatar Emergency created with my Digital Rhetorics students.

Captivating Technologies wiki
A collaborative wiki on Captivating Technologyies, a collection of essays on race and technology edited by Ruha Benjamin created with my Rhetoric and Technology students.



CV



Printable CV

An online version of my CV can be scrolled through on following slides.

Positions Held

Department of English TCU

Associate Professor of English 2018 - current

Assistant Professor of English 2012 - 2018

Center for Digital Expression TCU

Director 2018 - current

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media University of Kentucky

Assistant Director of Composition 2011 - 2012

Assistant Director 2010 - 2011

Writing Center Clemson University

Writing Center Coordinator 2009 - 2010

Education

PhD in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design

Clemson University, 2010

with additional course work at the European Graduate School Saas Fee, Switzerland

MA in English Literature

San Francisco State University, 2006

BS in Biology (minors in English and Theology)

The Master’s College, 2003

Monographs

Rhetoric is Technology: Race, Resistance, Responsibility.

Monograph in progress. Prospectus and sample chapters currently under review by MIT Press.

Rhizcomics: Rhetoric, Technology, and New Media Composition.

Digital Monograph. University of Michigan Press and Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, 2017. http://www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/books/rhizcomics_drc/

Winner of the 2018 Kairos Best Webtext Award

Reviewed by Anastasia Salter, Technical Communication Quarterly, 29:3, 2019, 319-322.Online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10572252.2020.1768030

Research Areas

Rhetorical Theory

Visual Rhetoric

Digital Humanities

Multimodal Composition

Comics and
Graphic Novels

History of Technology / Technology of History

History of Rhetoric

New Media Theory

Video Games

Classical Rhetoric

Scholarly Publications

“Play Smarter Not Harder: Developing Your Scholarly Meta.” Scholarly and Research Communication. 10:3, 2019. Online: https://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/333

“Making Rhizcomics: Methodologies for Digital Monographs.” Kairos, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2018. Online: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/23.1/inventio/helms/index.html

“Making Comics as Scholarship: A Reflection on the Process behind Digital Humanities Quarterly 9.4.” Kairos, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2018 (third author). Online: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/23.1/inventio/salter-et-al/index.html

“Potential Panels: Toward a Theory of Augmented Comics.” All the World’s a Link: Perspectives on Augmented Reality across Art, Industry, and Academia. Editors: Sean Morey and John Tinnell. Parlor Press, 2017.

“What If the Who Became the What: Bernard Stiegler Listens to Tommy.” Itineration. February 2016. Republished in Hyperrhiz 22, 2020. Online: http://media.hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz22/sf/pinball/helms/index.html

“Is This Article a Comic?” Digital Humanities Quarterly. Special issue on Comics as Scholarship. Vol. 9, No. 4, Fall 2015. Online: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/4/000230/000230.html

Vorhandenheit.” Part of “MOMLA: from Panel to Gallery.” Kairos, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2013. Online: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/17.2/topoi/vitanza-kuhn/helms.html

“Miller’s Tale: Translating 300 from Comic to Film.” PRE/TEXT, Vol. 19, Nos. 1-4, Summer 2009. 75-95.

“Helenistic Encomium: A Reflection on Comics and Rhetoric.” Kairos. Vol. 13 No. 2, Spring 2009. Online: http://www.technorhetoric.net/13.2/disputatio/helms/index.html.

“The Task of the Name: A Reply to Carol Poster.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 41, No. 3, Fall 2008. 278-287

“Forward.” Interpretations. San Francisco: San Francisco State University, Spring 2006. 9-10.

“Mockt with Art: Readerial Transience and Authorial Immortality in Macbeth, Winter’s Tale, and Metamorphoses.” Interpretations. San Francisco: San Francisco State University, Spring 2005. 73-90.

Review Articles

“Review of Discourse, Figure by Jean-Francois Lyotard.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 46, No. 1, 2013. 122-129.

Book Reviews

Total Interaction: Theory and Practice of a New Paradigm for the Design Disciplines.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 50:2, June 2007. 180-181.

“Readings and Re-readings.” RedFence. vol. 1. Fall 2008. 81 - 88. Online: http://redfenceproject.com/NewDesign/articles_sp.pl?page1=1, 2006.

Only Revolutions.” RedFence. vol. 1. Fall 2008. 89 - 91. Online: http://redfenceproject.com/NewDesign/articles_sp.pl?onlyrev=1, 2006.

Omega the Unknown.” RedFence.com, Online: http://redfenceproject.com/NewDesign/articles.pl?omega=1, December 31, 2007.

Falling Man.” RedFence.com, Online: http://redfenceproject.com/NewDesign/articles.pl?fallingman=1, October 19, 2007.

Fragile Things.” RedFence.com, Online: http://redfenceproject.com/NewDesign/articles pl?fragile=1, July 8, 2007.

Professional Service

Turtle Island Video Games Collection

Steering Committee 2020 - current

MLA Committee on the History and Theory of Composition

Nominee 2019

Present Tense

Review Board 2019 - current

Composition Forum

Reviewer 2017

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

Reviewer 2017

Digital Humanities Quarterly ADHO

Reviewer 2015 - current

Enculturation George Mason University

Editorial Board 2009 - current

The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects Indiana University

Editorial Board 2009 - current

Interpretations San Francisco State University

Editor 2006

Grants

TCU Inclusive Excellence Grant. (Co-PI) $15,000. Recieved, Spring 2020.

TCU Instructional Development Grant. (Co-PI) $3,600 plus partial matching funds from the Center for Digital Expression, College of Fine Arts, and Department of English. Received, fall 2018.

AddRan College of Liberal Arts Grant Submission Incentive Program. (PI) $5000 to support grants applications. Received, summer 2018.

CoFA Creativity, Innovation, and Interdisciplinarity in Learning Grant Program. (Co-PI) $2,575 for equipment for a library gaming lab. Received, summer 2018.

CoFA Microgrant for New Technologies. (Co-PI) $1500 for equipment for a library gaming lab. Received, summer 2018.

Computer Skills

Adobe
Animate
Dreamweaver
Flash
Illustrator
InDesign
Muse
Photoshop
Premiere

Microsoft Office
Word
Excel
PowerPoint
Publisher

Other
Inform 7
Final Cut Pro
Twine
Unity

Conference Presentations

“New Directions for the Dissertation.” Roundtable session at MLA convention, Washington, DC, January 8, 2022. (accepted)

“(In)Hospitality as Antiracist Rhetorical Strategy in Hip-hop and the Classroom.” at RSA Convention 2020 (canceled due to pandemic).

“Code Switching and Code Stitching: An Arcade of Twine Games.” at RSA Convention 2020 (canceled due to pandemic).

“The High Cost of Love: Passive Exploitation of Labor in DH.” Part of the “What We Teach When We Teach Digital Humanities: Labor and Ethics” panel delivered to the MLA Convention, Chicago, January 6, 2019.

“The Invisibility of Digital Labor.” Part of the “Getting Credit in Digital Publishing and Digital Humanities Projects” panel delivered to the MLA Convention, Chicago, January 5, 2019.

“Making and Evaluating a Digital Monograph.” Part of the “Presence, Preservation, and Publication” panel delivered to the Digital Frontiers Conference, Denton, TX, September 22, 2017.

“Comics in Academia” panel delivered at Comicpalooza, Houston, TX, May 13, 2017.

“Creating a Scholarly Digital Comic from Start to Finish.” Part of the “That’s Not How Scholarship Works: Exploring the Process of Multimodal Critical Making” panel delivered to the MLA Convention, Philadelphia, January 6, 2017.

“Issues in Contemplative Writing Pedagogy.” Panel chair. Conference on College Composition and Communication, Houston, TX, April 7, 2016.

“Virtual Risk, Actual Innovation: Rickert’s Rhetoric Redefined.” Part of the “Ambience, Innovation, Invention” panel. Conference on College Composition and Communication, Tampa, FL, March 19, 2015.

“Transparency, Pedagogy, Englightenment: Stiegler’s Radical Call to Teaching Technology.” Part of the “Pharmacon of Digital Exposure: Bernard Stiegler’s Open Access Enlightenment” panel delivered to the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Indianapolis, March 22, 2014.

“Intimate Moments Between Invention and Memory.” Part of the “Technics and Writing: The Strange Techno-composition of Bernard Stiegler” panel delivered to the Computers and Writing Conference, Frostburg State University, June 7, 2013.

Conference Presentations

“Four Strategies for Teaching Complex Image-Making.” with Joddy Murray. Part of the Digital Pedagogy Poster session at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Las Vegas, NV, March 16, 2013.

“What If the Who Became the What: Bernard Stiegler Listens to Tommy.” Part of the “MLArcade” panel delivered to the Modern Language Association Convention, Boston, January 5, 2013.

Vorhandenheit.” Part of the “MoMLA: From Panel to Gallery” panel delivered to the Modern Language Association Convention, Seattle, January 6, 2012.

“Composing Multimodally about Multimodal Composition.” Part of the “Composition of the Image: Contested Space Between Image and Text” panel delivered to the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Atlanta, April 9, 2011.

“Hericlitean Apeiron and Boundless Readings.” Part of “The Task of Heraclitus: Responding to Carol Poster” panel delivered to the Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Minneapolis, May 30, 2010.

“Composing a Multimodal Dissertation on Multimodal Composition.” Part of the “Digital Scholarship” panel delivered to the Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, December 29, 2009.

“Augmented Pedagogy.” Part of the “Classroom 2.0: Teaching, Learning, and Theorizing Adobe Breeze” panel delivered to the Computers and Writing Conference, UC Davis, June 19, 2009.

“Clickers, iPhones, and Laptops: Managing the Challenges of an Interactive Classroom.” Delivered with Steven Ray to the New Media Consortium Summer Conference, Monterey, June 12, 2009.

“Figure, Discourse: Postcritical Comics.” Part of the “Knowing, Doing, and Making Comics in Rhetoric and Composition” panel delivered to the Conference on College Composition and Communication, San Francisco, March 12, 2009.

“Mechamputext: A Video Essay.” Part of the “Fluidity and Threatened Discord” panel delivered to the EGSA Conference at UNC Charlotte, January 30, 2009.

“Post-Critical Composition: A Call for Graphic Academic Discourse.” delivered to the Watson Conference, Louisville, October 16, 2008.

“Cold Fusion: Teaching Writing Across the Cool Media.” Part of the “Not just for fun: Tinker Toys, comics, and rock n’ roll” panel delivered to the International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, Austin, May 31, 2008.

Conference Presentations

300: From Cool Comic to Cool Film.” Part of the “Visual Rhetoric of Comics, ‘Spectacle’ and Mail Art” panel delivered to the Conference on College Composition and Communication, New Orleans, April 4, 2008.

“iStr8ne: Electracy in We Are the Strange.” Part of the “Communication and Digital Culture VI: We Are the Strange” panel delivered to the Pop Culture Association / American Culture Association National Conference, San Francisco, March 21, 2008.

“Perspectives on Information Design: Expanding the User Experience Design,” delivered to the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association National Conference, Boston, March 2007.

“Mockt with Art: Readerial Transience and Authorial Immortality in Macbeth and Metamorphoses.” Part of the “Gendering Humanism: Public and Private Selves in English Renaissance Literature” panel delivered to the Renaissance Society of America, San Francisco, March 25, 2006.

“Foucault’s Pendulum as a Metaphor for Foucault’s Pendulum.” Delivered to the Association of Graduate Students in English Spring Conference: “(dis)locating power, (re)locating identity,” California State University Northridge, March 20, 2004.

Service Experience

Department of English TCU

Advisory Committee 2019 - current

(Advisory Chair, 2019-2020)

Graduate Application Committee (ad hoc) 2014 - 2019

Mentoring Committee (ad hoc) 2019 - current

Undergraduate Studies Committee 2014 - current

Composition Committee Member 2012 - 2014

Graduate Council TCU

2021 - current

Graduate Spectrum TCU

Faculty Advisor 2017 - 2019

Human-Animal Relationships TCU

Affiliate faculty 2016 - current

Compliance and Affirmative Action TCU

Compliance and Affirmative Action Committee 2015 - 2017

Center for Digital Expression TCU

Advisory Committee Member 2012 - current

Women and Gender Studies TCU

Theme Semester Committee (ad hoc) 2016 – current

Affiliate faculty 2015 – current

Critical Race and Ethnic Studies AddRan

Affiliate faculty 2016 - current

Digital Culture and Data Analytics AddRan

Advisory Committee 2015 - current

Division of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media University of Kentucky

Steering Committee Member 2010 - current

Technology Committee Member 2010 - current

Composition and Communication Program University of Kentucky

Steering Committee Member 2010 - 2011

Orientation Leader 2010 - 2011

Deartment of Art University of Kentucky

Search Committee Member 2010 - 2011

Dean’s Council of Students Advisory Committee Clemson University, College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities

Graduate Representative 2007 - 2008

Graduate Student Senate Clemson University

Senator RCID February - May 2007

Alternate RCID November 2006 - January 2007

Graduate Literature Association San Francisco State University

Co-Chair 2005 - 2006

Officer 2004 - 2006

Teaching

TCU

FALL 2021

Writing 20303: Writing Games: Gender and Sexuality in Video Games

Writing 40463: Multimedia Authoring : Comics Production

SPRING 2021

Writing 38063: Writing Major Seminar

FALL 2020

Writing 20303: Writing Games: Gender and Sexuality in Video Games

Writing 80703: Rhetoric and Technology

FALL 2019

Writing 20303: Writing Games: Gender and Sexuality in Video Games

Writing 40463: Multimedia Authoring : Comics Production

SPRING 2019

English 80703: Popular Culture and New Media

FALL 2018

Writing 20303: Writing Games: Gender and Sexuality in Video Games

Writing 40163: Multimedia Authoring 1: Image and Hypertext

SPRING 2018

Writing 20303: Writing Games: Gender and Sexuality in Video Games

Writing 30293: Non-Human Rhetorics and Representation

SPRING 2017

English 20803: Intermediate Composition: Writing as Argument

English 50973: Visual Rhetoric of Comics and Graphic Novels

FALL 2016

Writing 20303: Writing Games: Gender and Sexuality in Video Games

Writing 30253: Rhetorical Traditions

SPRING 2016

English 20803: Intermediate Composition: Writing as Argument

Writing 40163: Multimedia Authoring 1: Image and Hypertext

SPRING 2015

English 20803: Intermediate Composition: Writing as Argument

English 60123: Modern Critical Theory

FALL 2014

Writing 20303: Writing Games

Writing 40333: Language, Rhetoric, Culture

Teaching

SPRING 2013

English 80703: Digital Rhetorics

English 40263: Multimedia Authoring 2: Animation and Film

FALL 2013

English 30253: Rhetorical Traditions

English 40333: Language, Rhetoric, Culture

SPRING 2012

English 20303: Writing Games

English 40263: Multimedia Authoring 2

FALL 2012

English 10803: Introductory Composition: Writing as Inquiry

English 30253: Rhetorical Traditions

University of Kentucky

SPRING 2012

Art History 698: Topical Studies: Visual Rhetoric of Comics

FALL 2011

A&S 300: Visual Rhetoric

SPRING 2011

WRD 111: Composition and Communication II

FALL 2010

WRD 110: Composition and Communication I

Clemson University (Graduate Instructor)

English 103: Freshman Composition
2008 - 2009

English 314: Technical Communications
2007 - 2008

Communications 150: Introduction to Human Communication 2006 - 2007

San Francisco State University (TA)

English 501: Age of Chaucer Spring 2005

North Bay Christian Academy

AP Literature 2005 - 2006

Latin 2 2005 - 2006

Latin 1 2004 - 2005

Workshops

Critical Making as Scholarship

With Anastasia Salter. Forthcoming at the 2022 Digital Humanities Summer Institute. University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Summer 2022.

Just 3 Things: Twine

With Kit Snyder. Center for Digital Expression. TCU, November 5, 2021.

Grading Less, Learning More: Ethical Assessment Practices for Student Agency

With Jessica Zeller. Pedagogy in Practice Workshop, TCU, September 10, 2021.

Twine Workshop and Showcase

With Gabi Kirilloff. NTX Gaming Symposium, March 13 and 27, 2021.

Teaching with Zoom

With Curt Rode. Center for Digital Expression. TCU, August 7 and 14, 2020.

Just 3 Things: Frankencoding

Center for Digital Expression. TCU, October 29, 2019.

Triumphs, Perils, and Pitfalls in Digital Publishing

Center for Digital Expression. TCU, March 26, 2018.

Invited Presentations

“Pushing Machines: Race, Rhetoric, and Technology.” RCID Distinguished Alumni Research Forum, Clemson University, October 19, 2020.

“The River Speaks: Digital Humanities I.” Panel delivered to TCC Digital Humanities, Fort Worth, February 14, 2019.

“Graphic Novel Brown Bag” Roundtable at TCU Library, April 5, 2018.

“Comics in the Academy” Roundtable at the UNT Willis Library. April 13, 2017.

“Re-learning to Write: Understanding New Media by Composing in It.” AddRan Back to Class Night. April 2, 2013.

“You Are a Gadget.” University of Kentucky Visual Studies Colloquium. February 17, 2012.

The Watchmen: Comics and Visual Rhetoric” guest lecture in Victor Vitanza’s RCID 802: Cultural Research Methods, March, 2008.

“Structure, Sign, and Play: a Text Game” Serious Games Colloquium, January 28, 2008.

“Comics and Technical Writing” Brown Bag Lunch presentation to teachers to Advanced Writing Teachers, November 12, 2007.

Student Committees

PhD Dissertation and Exam Committes

Nick Brown. Chair.

Nick Brown. Phd Exams (field).

Jim Creel. Third Reader.

Ashley Hughes, Second Reader.

Jessica Mencken, Fourth Reader.

Terry Peterman, Second Reader.

Colin Robins, Chair.

Colin Robbins. PhD exams (focus).

Danny Rodriguez. Second Reader.

Danny Rodriguez. PhD exams (field).

José Luis Cano, PhD Exams (focus).

Joanna Schmidt. Third Reader.

Peter Simes, Third Reader.

Kayla Sparks, PhD exams (focus).

Kayla Sparks, Co-chair.

Julie Vu, Fourth Reader.

Ryan Wheeler, PhD exams (field).

Ryan Wheeler, Co-chair.

Wilton Wright. Second Reader.

MA Thesis Committes

Alejo Benedetti (Art History), Third Reader

Saffyre Falkenberg, Second reader.

Axel Severs, Second Reader.

Chase Shanafelt, Second Reader.

Hannah Taylor, Chair.

Matt Tettleton, Third Reader

Amy Tuttle, MA Thesis, Chair.

Undergraduate Honors Committees

Elizabeth de Gravelle.

Mandy Hendry.

Ashley Rea, Supervisor.

Lauren Truong.

Allana Wooley.

Other Experience and Awards

Best Webtext Award

Kairos (May 2018)

Faculty Research Award

TCU English Department (May 2017)

First Place, Faculty and Staff Category

TCU New Media Writing Studio 10th anniversary awards (March 2017)

Inaugural A. David Lewis Best Online Comic Studies Scholarship Award

Special issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly on Comics as Scholarship, (October 2016)

Teacher of the Year
North Bay Christian Academy (2005 - 2006)

Founded High School AP Literature Program North Bay Christian Academy (2005)

Founded High School Latin Program
North Bay Christian Academy (2004)

Participant: Rusticatio Spoken Latin Program North American Living Latin Institute (2005)

Student Body Vice-President
The Master’s College (2001-2002)

Languages

Latin

Classical and Ecclesiastical

proficient in reading, writing,

and speaking

Greek

Homeric, Attic, Koine

proficient in reading



Coding Languages

HTML

CSS

JavaScript

Inform

Professional Organizations

Rhetoric Society of America

Modern Literature Association

National Council of Teachers of English

Contact





Jason Helms, PhD
Associate Professor of English
Director of the Center for Digital Expression
Texas Christian University

317b Reed Hall
TCU Box 297270
2800 South University Drive
Fort Worth, TX 76109
(817) 257-7082

jason.helms@tcu.edu
@helmstreet