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Academic Positions
Western Michigan University. Assistant Professor of English (August 2004-).
English language and multiethnic American literature.
Georgia Institute of Technology. Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow (2002-2004).
The University of Georgia. Robert E. Park Teaching Fellow (Summer 2002); Graduate Teaching Assistant (1989-91 and 2000-01).
The University of North Carolina-Asheville (1996-1998). Adjunct instructor.
Northern Virginia Community College (1992-1994 and 1996). Adjunct instructor.
The University of the District of Columbia (1992-1994). Adjunct instructor.
Teaching at Western Michigan University
Undergraduate courses:
English 4720: American Dialects (Fall 2004, Spring and Summer 2005, Spring and Fall 2006, Summer and Fall 2007)
English 3720: Development of Modern English (Fall 2004, 2005, and 2006, Spring 2007)
English 2230: African American Literature (Spring 2007)
Development of new graduate courses:
English 5220: Studies in American Literature: The Language of American Literature. Linguistic applications to literature, incorporating literary dialect, discourse analysis, pragmatics, stylistics, and computational methods, with emphasis on linguistic representations of race and ethnicity. (Spring and Fall 2005; Summer 2006)
English 5970: (Special Topic) Politics and the English Language. Analyzes uses of linguistic authority in maintaining social organization. Includes discussions of standardization, prescriptivism, language and gender, language and class, and related topics, with attention to theories and methods of discourse and text analysis. (Spring 2008)English 5970: (Special Topic) Language Variation and Educational Outcomes. Focuses on the perceptions of educators about non-mainstream varieties of English, and the impacts of these perceptions on educational outcomes for elementary and secondary students who speak non-mainstream varieties. (In development)
Areas of scholarly and teaching interest
Language variation and sociolinguistics
Computational and corpus linguistics
Language attitudes and standardization
Language in the African American community
Linguistic applications to literature
Media, literary, and other discourse analysis
History of the English language
American and African American literature after 1865
Academic Preparation
Doctor of Philosophy The University of Georgia, Athens (May 2002).
Concentration in English language and American literature after 1865.Dissertation: Dialect and Dichotomy: Literary Representations of African American Speech. (Book published by the University of Alabama Press, September 2004.) Focusing on American fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and literary representations of African American dialectal speech, this study demonstrates how linguistic and literary studies can benefit from a combination of computational and qualitative approaches to literary text analysis. With emphasis on the role of literary portrayals of dialectal speech in characterization, it includes chapters on the functions and effects of African American speech representation in Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Master of Arts The University of Georgia.
Concentration in English language and American literature.Bachelor of Arts The University of Florida, Gainesville.
Concentration in American literature. Go Gators!
Other Professional Experience
Research / Editorial, The Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States, Online Edition (1998-2001).
Editorial Consultant, Oxford University Press (1999-2001), for the New Oxford American Dictionary (2001) and the Oxford American College Dictionary (2002).
Publications and Selected Conference Papers
Dialect and Dichotomy: Literary Representations of African American Speech
University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title, January 2006.Representations of Speech and Attitudes about Race in The Sound and the Fury
Southern Journal of Linguistics 25:1/2 (2001).
Southeastern Conference on Linguistics XXXIII, Birmingham, Alabama, November 2000.Jim's Language and the Issue of Race in Huckleberry FinnLanguage and Literature 10:2 (2001).
Southeastern Conference on Linguistics XXXII, Oxford, Mississippi, April 2000.Literary Dialect
Entry for Language in the American South, Michael Montgomery and Ellen Johnson, eds., The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The University of Mississippi Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2007.
A History of the History: Philosophies and Texts for Teaching the History of the English Language
Studies in the History of the English Language 5, University of Georgia, October 2007.
What Computational Linguistics Can Do for You. Yes, You, Department of English, Western Michigan University, 2006.
Divided by a Common Language? Language Attitudes and the Northern Cities Shift
Presented with WMU undergraduate student researchers Brooke Pearson and Kevin Kane at the American Dialect Society, Albuquerque, NM, January 2006.
"Hey Y'all! I'm Goin' Home!" Perceptions of a South Atlantic Speaker in Michigan
Southeastern Conference on Linguistics, North Carolina State University, April 2005.
Performing Southernness: Dialectal Representations and Southern Linguistic Identity
"Language Variety in the South III: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives," University of Alabama, April 2004.
Articulating Jim: Language and Characterization in Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain Circle, South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference, Atlanta, November 2003.
From March Madness to Talladega: Closed Captioning in Sports Interviews (with Susan L. Tamasi)
American Dialect Society, Atlanta, November 2003.
Judging Authenticity: Paul Laurence Dunbar and Zora Neale Hurston Face the Critics
"New Perspectives on African American Vernacular English," hosted by New Ways of Analyzing Variation 31, Stanford University, October 2002.
Literary Dialect as Linguistic Evidence: A Computational Approach with Data from Faulkner, Hurston, and Twain
American Dialect Society, San Francisco, January 2002.
Gullah Online: The Turner Interviews
"Gullah: A Linguistic Legacy of Africans in America--A Conference on the 50th Anniversary of Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect," Washington, D.C., November 2000.
Grants
Awards and HonorsInternal (Western Michigan University) and student research support:
Faculty Research and Creative Activities Support Fund Award, 2007-2008.
College of Arts and Sciences Teaching and Research Awards, 2005, 2006, 2007.
Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Awards, Undergraduate Career Development Awards: 19 student awards totaling $4600, 2005, 2006, and 2007.Lee Honors College Awards for Undergraduate Research: Two student awards totaling $3700, 2006 and 2007.
Distinguished Teaching Award Nominee (2007), Western Michigan University
Choice Outstanding Academic Title (2006)
Dialect and Dichotomy: Literary Representations of African American Speech (Alabama, 2004).Faculty Honorary Membership, Golden Key International Honour Society (2006), WMU chapter
Presidential Honorary Membership (2002-2005), American Dialect Society
University-Wide Finishing Doctoral Research Assistantship (2001-2002), University of Georgia
University-Wide Research Assistantship (1998-2000), University of Georgia
Excellence in Teaching Award Nominee (1997), University of North Carolina-Asheville
Service
University Service
Western Michigan University Surveys of Student Engagement Readers’ Panel, 2005.
College of Arts and Sciences
Steering Committee, WMU Linguistics Faculty Working Group, 2007-.
WMU Linguistics Faculty Working Group, 2004-.Department of English
Technology Committee, 2006-.
Undergraduate Committee, 2005-.
Founding Faculty Advisor of WMU chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, English Honor Society, 2005-.
English Language/Linguistics Initiative for Compact Plan, 2004.
Early American Literature Search Committee, 2004-05.Service to the Profession
Editorial Advisory Board, American Speech, Journal of the American Dialect Society (2006-2008 term).
Nominated to MLA Executive Committee on Language Change (election to take place fall 2007).