Brian Jansen

Brian Jansen (he/him) is assistant professor at the University of Maine with a joint appointment between the Department of Communication and Journalism and the Department of English. A graduate of the University of Calgary with a PhD in English literature, Brian is a media studies and literary scholar with an interest in questions of “work” or labor – how we depict it, how we talk about it, how we find it fulfilling (or not).

His research considers aesthetic production at the intersection of labor and capital, as well as the politics of American professional wrestling as a live performance artform which exists uneasily as a hybrid of sport, theatre, stunt work, and serialized television. In particular, he is interested in pro wrestling as a lens for considering the tensions inherent in neoliberalism as a political project: the private sphere’s erosion of public life, the uneasy alliance of market-first and social conservatism, and the challenges of care work.