Elizabeth Pollard, lead author of Volume 1 Full and Concise (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence at San Diego State University, where she has been teaching courses in Roman History, World History, and witchcraft studies since 2002. Pollard is founding Co-Director of the Center for Comics Studies and co-Champion of Comics and Social Justice for the SDSU President’s Big Ideas Initiative (2020–present). Her research investigates women accused of witchcraft in the Roman world and explores the exchange of goods and ideas between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the early centuries of the Common Era. Pollard is currently working on two comics-related projects: an analysis of comics about ancient Rome over the last century and a graphic history exploring the influence of classical understandings of witchcraft on their representations in modern comics. She has also published on various pedagogical and digital history topics, including writing about witchcraft on wikipedia, tweeting on the backchannel of the large lecture, and digital humanities approaches to visualizing Roman History. Pollard is also deeply immersed in assessment; she has served as both the assessment coordinator for the Arts and Science Division at San Diego State University and has served as consultant to the College Board. She is also the co-editor of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A Companion Reader 4th Edition.
