Zane Austin Willard is a scholar of Communication and Cultural Studies. Zane’s research and teaching interests are in critical cultural and media studies, surveillance studies, and queer theory and gender and sexuality studies. Analyzing popular culture and legal and political discourse, his work considers the ubiquity of surveillance culture’s implications for minoritized communities, particularly queer communities, and emphasizes the racialized, classed, and gendered dimensions of surveillance in the neoliberal state and techno-culture.

Zane’s scholarship has been published in Communication, Culture, and Critique, the Journal of Communication Inquiry, Communication Teacher and the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. He has presented his scholarship at the annual conventions of the National Communication Association, American Studies Association, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Southern States Communication Assocaition, and the Florida Communication Association.

Committed to a critical praxis that extends theoretical inquiry into creative expression as cultural commentary, Zane is a multimedia artist and practitioner. His film, photography, and creative writing addresses material themes about the body and place with a focus on issues of sexuality, social class, and their intersections. Zane’s film and photography work has been exhibited in gallery shows and film festivals in New York, Toronto, Tampa, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Fort Collins, and in virtual exhibitions.

Professionally, Zane has over seven years of experience in learning and development, digital media production, event planning and production, and team management in promotional industries, non-profit organizations, higher education, and health and wellness. Regardless of the opportunity Zane brings his communication training and his critical values to create more just, equitable, and impactful spaces across industries.

Currently, Zane is a graduate teaching associate in the Department of Communication at USF, a graduate instructional assistant of communication education in USF’s College of Engineering, and an Adjunct Instructor of Communication and Media Studies at The University of Tampa. For 2024 he is the Vice-Chair for the Graduate Student Committee of NCA’s Activism and Social Justice Division. Committed to expanding critical cultural scholarship across disciplines, he is a Graduate Student Affiliate of the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill and an Elinor Ostrom Fellow at the Mercatus Center for Social, Economic, and Political Thought at George Mason University. He is also a two-time alumnus of the Mercatus Center’s Frederic Bastiat Fellowship and a former Don Lavoie Fellow. He earned his Master’s in Communication from USF and his Bachelor’s from the University of Tampa with a triple major in Economics, Communication, and Film & Media Arts and minors in History and Cinema Studies.