Christopher Jeansonne is a Senior Lecturer in the Communication and Media Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on critical media pedagogy and gameful learning, investigating strategies designed to help students explore how identities are established within and articulated through popular culture media. His dissertation Superheroes in the Classroom, Or: An Autoethnography of Great Power, Responsibility, and Community in a Critical Media Pedagogy was the recipient of the 2019 Manuel Barkan Dissertation Award. He has led numerous learning practice professional developments at RPI, including as the co-organizer for the 2023 and 2024 Gameful and Immersive Learning Symposium, the 2024 Innovative Pedagogy Fellowships for Faculty, and the 2025 Reflective Pedagogy Workshops. Chris also does archival research and interpretive analysis of popular culture media, including on transnational cinema, transmedial genres such as superheroes, and adaptations across formats. He is currently co-writing, with Maurice Suckling from the RPI games program, a monograph on the Tolkien-inspired board game War of the Ring for the Tabletop Gaming series from University of Michigan Press (forthcoming). Drawing on his background in media production, Chris highlights intersections between critical and creative work through arts-based and project-based teaching strategies, and he brings his theory into his personal practice by designing analog games for the classroom and beyond. Prior to his work in academia, Chris was a filmmaker working on both commercial and independent film projects, and was the founder and chair of an award-winning media arts program at The Willow School in New Orleans. From 1999-2006, he lived and taught in Japan, first as an ESL iteacher for the Ibukiyama Board of Education, and later as the co-director of the ESL program at Seisen University in Minami-Hikone, where he also taught American culture and film and was the lead instructor of the Aikido Club.