Susanna Cassisa (she/her), is originally from Oxford, Mississippi, she earned her B.A. in International Studies and German from the University of Mississippi in 2021. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in German Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include modern queer history in Germany and the United States and the ways that narrative tropes—especially narratives of violence and crime—inform our understanding of the world around us. Susanna is committed to producing accessible public scholarship, and her work has been featured on multiple platforms, including the Washington Post. After completing her M.A., she plans to pursue a career in journalism.
Project Description:
Susanna’s experimental M.A. thesis, supervised by Dr. Kyle Frackman, is a podcast written accessibly for a general audience. It explores the history and functions of the ongoing moral panic that labels LGBTQ+ people as sexual predators, or, more recently, “groomers.” Taking a transnational approach to understanding this trope, Groomer Rumor traces these narratives as they have appeared in popular culture throughout the last century in Germany and the United States, calling attention to the cyclical nature of moral panics and the common threads that weave through them.