Joe Sutliff Sanders joined the Faculty of Education after more than a decade teaching in literature departments at universities across the United States. He is a former junior high school English teacher at a small town in Japan and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Luxembourg.
Joe’s research tends to begin with questions about form and genre—How can a work of nonfiction signal a lack of authority? What does the shape of a picture book invite? How does the formula of best-selling novels about orphan girls shift over time?—and extend then to explorations of ideology. His approach to children’s literature is therefore primarily textual, historical, and theoretical.
He is especially passionate about children’s literature’s ability to examine differences and contest marginalisation.
He has written extensively on comic books and published the chapter A Walking Shadow: Life as a Reader and Author of Neil Gaiman in the academic book The Artistry of Neil Gaiman: Finding Light in the Shadows, edited by Joe M. Sommers and Kyle Eveleth.