Professor Phillips’ research focuses on the intersection between crime, popular culture, and popular media. She is the author of Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media (2017, Rowman & Littlefield) and co-authored Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice, and the American Way(2013, NYU Press), with Staci Strobl (Shenandoah University).

Professor Phillips is the director of the Center for Crime and Popular Culture, a center designed to foster critical thinking about how representations of crime and justice in popular media permeate our daily lives. The Center hosts special events, lectures, and guest speakers on campus, each geared toward understanding the production of popular culture and how cultural artifacts shape and reflect public attitudes toward crime, justice, and the operations of the criminal justice system.

Select Publications:

Phillips, N. & Strobl, S. (2022). Global capitalism as blood sacrifice: Mainstream American comic books and depictions of economic inequality. Critical Criminology. DOI: 0.1007/s10612-022-09618-z.

Chagnon, N. & Phillips, N. (2021). “Like fetching water with a bucket full of holes”: High-profile cases and perceptions of system failure. Critical Criminology. DOI 10.1007/s10612-020-09541-1.

Vollum, S., & Garland, T., & Phillips, N. (2021). The Walking Dead and criminological theory: Exploring the impact of radical social change on crime through the lens of a zombie apocalypse. In Crime TV: Streaming Criminology in Popular Culture. Grubb, J. & Posick, C. (Eds.). New York, NY: NYU Press.

Fileborn, B. & Phillips, N. (2019). From ‘Me Too’ to ‘Too Far’? Contesting the boundaries of sexual violence in contemporary activism. In Fileborn, B., & Loney-Howes, R. (Eds.). #MeToo and the politics of social change. London, UK: Palgrave MacMillian.