Joelle Mann

I'm a doctoral candidate in the English Department at Stony Brook. My dissertation investigates contemporary literary forms through an analysis of vocal dialectics and changing technologies. I’m exploring the expressions of a multi-media vocality, examining the interactions among cultural polemics, aesthetic forms, and changing media in the twenty-first century.

Pecha Kucha : The Art of Chit Chat

Pecha Kucha : The Art of Chit Chat

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” Emily Dickinson’s circumlocutory anthem  for poetic truth haunted my English course last semester. Using Dickinson’s verse as a frame along with a contemporary reading of Herman Melville’s Bartleby–perhaps best illustrated in this short film by directors Laura Naylor and Kristen Kee–we consistently asked how truth becomes socially constructed […]

“Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?”

"Stop, Hey, What's That Sound?"

Buffalo Springfield’s essential protest song “For What It’s Worth”  remains wholly relevant. Written by Stephen Stills in 1966 after he witnessed a Sunset Strip curfew protest, the song elicits a timely missive about listening to resistance in the face of violence. The eerie sounds and uneasy mood of the song cement the socially conscious voice […]

Public Personas and the Teacher of Athletes

Walt Whitman in 1869 during his years in Washington. (Photo from "A Life of Walt Whitman" by Henry Bryan Binns via Wikimedia)

I am the teacher of athletes, He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own, He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. –Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (1855) Walt Whitman has made an interesting resurgence within my research and teaching practice […]

Ethical Readers and New Media

Ethical Readers and New Media

A New Republic of Letters in the Digital Age In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853), Melville self-reflexively critiques the life and death of reading.  Melville’s titular character Bartleby’s dead letter-reading and life-writing (or not-writing, because, after all, Bartleby “prefers not to”) criticize national ethics of expression and representation.  The novella can also […]

Brown Bag Wrap-Up

Brown Bag Wrap-Up

Calling All Brown Baggers For this month’s Brown Bag event, Professor Dunn and several graduate students presented some methods and techniques on how to effectively respond to student writing. Professor Dunn began by identifying some advice for instructors which is also summarized here. Graduate students then offered a variety of suggestions based on current educational research. […]

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