Rick Pulos

Rick Pulos (he/him/his) is a critical/cultural media scholar who studies the influence of popular culture in our everyday lives. He is interested in how audiences participate with the audio/visual world we live in and how mainstream media influences notions of identity and belonging, especially as it relates to race, gender, and sexuality. His research seeks to understand how we negotiate meaning through participation, interpretation, and resistance with visual culture and the nuanced ways we incorporate mainstream media into the fabric of our lives. As an ethnographer, he creates projects that put him into conversation with media audiences and pop culture fans to hear their stories and attempt to elucidate how popular culture works for them socially, culturally, and politically.

He is currently working on his dissertation project Queering, Diversifying, and Transforming Media Audiences which will include a traditional text-based research project and a related ethnographic film, Queer Sci-Fi: To Boldly Go Where No Gay Has Gone Before. This project focuses on queer sci-fi audiences and how popular culture has influenced who they are and their sense of belonging socially, culturally, and politically. His love of pop culture is tempered by his research on (mis)representations/uses/misuses of gender, race, class, and sexuality in mainstream media.

Rick is also a filmmaker, media content creator, and theatre artist with a focus on storytelling. He creates strategic content for social media marketing campaigns, artistic creations for theatrical projections, and ethnographic films about interesting people and communities. He is currently editing a documentary about The Theatre Company of Bryan-College Station. His media production skills include videography, editing (Adobe Premiere and Da Vinci Resolve), design (Adobe Creative Suite), and programming in Q-Lab. He is also a theatre producer and director, most recently leading a cast, crew, and orchestra of over 40 community members in a production of 1776: The Musical (Summer 2024).

Rick holds a B.A. from Yale University in Film Studies, an M.A. in Media Arts from Long Island University-Brooklyn, and an M.A. in Strategic Communication from Regent University. He is the former chair of the LGBTQ Caucus of the National Communication Association and an active Board Member of The Theatre Company of Bryan-College Station (TTC). He is also the creator and program director of TTC Teaches, a series of low-cost theatre workshops for the local community. You can find out more about Rick at www.rickpulos.com.

 Courses Taught

• Communication Technology Skills (audio/video/design)
• Communication for Technical Professions (in person and asynchronous online)
• Public Speaking (in person and asynchronous online)
• The Theatrical Vision/Theatre History
• Acting 1
• Voice and Diction

1776: The Musical (2024)
Director and Projection Designer
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-n2A9tkuXVR6yHzxyLVBOgLktm_hPcL/view?usp=share_link

TTC Teaches Social Media Marketing (2024)
Videographer and Editor
Basic Tap:
1. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1auNZu31zLVVFh-tnXkvL8Dx8nhx5Tk66/view?fbclid=IwY2xjawE8NuZleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHYPN_3ulLo41_R629CmPaCs950o_qL75v3Ru6XBFwuuftSKhAAAaHeXNGw_aem_AYIkiC02DyQPbppBBiWxJw
2. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1elmTO3S6kg9uWOUIl4k9bihEBM71K5Zc/view?usp=share_link

Zoe Nowalk at Texas A& M University (2023)
Videographer and Editor
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q5JLoDKxZl-9EpGLtQ3cicESbNM_arSV/view?usp=share_link

Cabaret (2023)
Projection Design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NU4rw3Me4c