Rebecca Rowe

Dr. Rebecca Rowe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature and Languages within the College of Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts at East Texas A&M University. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Connecticut (2021), an M.A. in English with a Children's Literature focus from Kansas State University (2016), and a B.A. in English Literature and History from Hollins University (2014).

Dr. Rowe's research centers on the intersection of three key areas: Children's media, Adaptation, and Disney. Her work examines how adaptations change character identities due to cultural, media, and audience differences, with particular focus on childhood, gender, race, and disability. She has founded and edits the International Journal of Disney Studies, the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to Disney scholarship, working with scholars from every continent except Antarctica.

Her recent publications reveal a strong trend toward analyzing how children's media navigates the relationship between adults and childhood, particularly examining the concept of 'kidulthood' - adults who maintain engagement with children's media. Her work spans multiple disciplines including literature, film, media studies, cultural studies, and fan studies, often focusing on Disney properties, animated films, and adaptations of canonical texts for younger audiences.

• She serves as the faculty advisor for the Applied Linguistics Lab and AI Lab
• She maintains a digital archive of teaching materials developed by her students
• She co-founded the International Journal of Disney Studies
• She has developed educational websites including 'Multimodality, Film, and You'

Dr. Rowe's teaching philosophy emphasizes literature as cultural study, student choice in learning paths, and creative engagement with course material. She teaches courses in children's literature, adolescent literature, film adaptation, and English education, with a focus on helping students understand how literature captures and impacts culture through everyday texts like Disney films and fairy tales.