Lissette Szwydky: Empowering Students Beyond The Classroom

In an increasingly interconnected world, transmedia studies and interdisciplinary practices offer a framework to think broadly, communicate creatively and engage across landscapes. It is through this framework that professor Lissette Lopez Szwydky combines her academic passions with real world practical applications. Szwydky is an associate professor of English at the U of A, where she also holds the James E. & Ellen Wadley Roper Endowed Professor of English (2024-27) and serves as affiliated faculty for the Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies program. Specializing in the Gothic tradition across forms and media, she sees stories and their effects on societies as operating beyond boundaries: "Stories don't operate in silos … they don't belong to one little bubble here and there. They're all interacting with one another."

Szwydky's Transmedia Adaptation course focuses on theory and methodology, looking at adaptations from a multitude of theoretical perspectives, highlighting the importance of thinking about how stories function across many disciplines. Similarly, her Transmedia Frankenstein course offers a case study of how these approaches apply specifically to the evolution of Frankenstein over the last 200 years. "Disciplinary methodologies are important, but they create a lot of gaps in understanding … you're not really going to get a full grasp of a topic until you start pulling from different disciplines."

This interdisciplinary approach not only offers students a chance to find inroads into their personal projects, but also is reflective of her approach to her two job market courses: M.A. Portfolio Workshop and Job Market(s): Academic & Industry. These courses are designed to help students navigate across careers and translate ideas for different professional audiences, training for both academic and non-academic careers, "helping students find inroads not only into their first career plan but also a Plan B, C and D." Szwydky's professional experience exemplifies the importance of having these conversations with students and mentoring them to successfully traverse the ever-changing market. Earning her doctorate in 2008 just before the market crash, Szwydky entered an academic job market landscape that had changed overnight. She worked in academic administration for four years before being able to find a tenure-track position.

These classes train students to be conversant with these professional questions, giving them a competitive edge. This additional training is what is helping her students get their academic positions. "I feel really proud of all of those students. All the Ph.D. students I've directed have academic jobs. And they were prepared to not go into an academic job if necessary — if a different career path opened instead. I think that's important: to be flexible and adaptable. That's always been true, but today more than ever."

"I hope that students really think hard about how they're moving through their graduate program, how they are positioning themselves professionally and who are the people who are going to help them do that." The interdisciplinary approach Szwydky takes in her classrooms is reshaping how students are participating in the world, gaining not only academic knowledge but also confidence and competence to engage broadly, empowering them to craft their own story, inside and outside of academia.