Ramzi Fawaz is an award-winning queer cultural critic, public speaker, and educator. He is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and host of the podcast Nerd from the Future. He is the author of the books The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (2016) and Queer Forms (2022), both published by NYU Press. He is a contributing editor to Film Quarterly, where he authors the column “Imagination Unbound,” which explores the radical democratic possibilities of contemporary film, media, and popular culture. He is currently writing a book titled How to Think Like a Multiverse: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World. In it, he argues for an understanding of humanities education as a form of psychedelic therapy, which uses art, literature, and media, instead of psychoactive drugs, to induce positive transformational effects on the well-being of multiple generations of students. In Fall 2025, he launched his podcast, Nerd from the Future, which features dynamic conversations with the nation's leading humanities professors about the central role of higher education in defending democratic freedoms.