Overview
Interviews about Diasporic-Disabled Writing, Teaching, and Advocacy
Media Mentions and Coverage
This appendix contains interviews, media mentions, and media coverage involving my creative and scholarly activity, teaching, and service, largely since I joined Pace in 2018. Although work outside of my probationary period (2020-25) does not factor into evaluation processes for tenure and promotion, I have also included two interviews and one op-ed to highlight enduring interest in the full range of my work by a variety of interviewers and media outlets.
I was interviewed by one of our majors, Mia Ilie, for her publishing internship with Campus Clipper, part of which involved blogging about her experience of college during the pandemic. She requested an interview with me because her theme was maintaining relationships in college during COVID-19, writing that: "I've been in several of your courses, almost all of them virtual, and have always felt like you have had a good relationship with your students, even from behind a screen" (Personal communication, 2023). This blog has since been published as an e-book.
Along with my coeditor, I was interviewed by Anicca Cox and Amy Lynch-Biniek for their book chapter on academic temporalities, labor, and knowledge-making, regarding our process of soliciting and editing our "Carework and Writing During COVID" special issues in Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics. We discussed our CFP as "a path to publication that is responsive to the current conditions under which so many are working" that accounted for writers' ranks and material working conditions, and the special issues as a challenge to "what counts" as an academic publication that has weight for hiring, tenure, and promotion procedures.
I was one of 12 off-the-record experts interviewed by Florence Keen and Blyth Crawford for their 50-page report on digital aggression and violence fomented by chan cultures. My work on digital aggression and 4chan is cited heavily in this report as well.
In my doctoral program at Rutgers University, I was interviewed by a former student for the alumni magazine, regarding my pedagogy and a safety pin tattoo I acquired after the 2016 election. Partly responding to my personal history with punk DIY cultures and makerspaces, and partly responding to post-Brexit symbolism, the safety pin ended up being "a symbol of both the movement and the spirit of her classroom: a safe space for students to question societal issues, come to realizations, and simply present their thoughts to the rest of the class." Although this interview took place prior to my appointment at Pace, I am including it as supplemental material to indicate the enduring impact of my deep embodiment pedagogy.
I was interviewed by my literary agent, Mary Krienke, to accompany "I am always in transition when disaster strikes," a lyric essay I published in the same issue about the Tamil genocide, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and belonging to the Eelam Tamil diaspora in the U.S. Although this interview took place prior to my appointment at Pace, this material later formed the basis of a craft talk I delivered at Pace in 2020; as such, I am including it as supplemental material to point to my creative agenda development and adaptation.
My implementation of experiential learning practices in humanities courses was featured in Dyson Digital Digest, describing my openness to multimodal, multigeneric, multisemiotic student projects and noting that, in my classrooms, a "short trauma-informed body scanning session can effectively and safely reconnect writers with immediate sensation; a brief trauma-informed body mapping exercise can help writers develop somatically-located and -focused narratives of lived experience from those sensations."
I was featured in Pace News for winning three prestigious awards. I received an honorable mention for the 2023 Kairos Best Webtext Award for "Hollow Me, Hollow Me, Until Only You Remain," published in Spark: A 4C4Equality Journal. I also received the 2023 Computers and Composition Michelle Kendrick Award for Outstanding Digital Production/Scholarship for my co-edited special issue on "Carework and Writing During COVID," Part I and Part II, published in the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics. Finally, I received the 2023 Technology Innovator Award, given by the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication, for long-term, innovative, radical contributions to the computers and writing community in teaching, scholarship, and service.
I was interviewed for the Pace Chronicle about winning the "Honoring Excellence" faculty award at the 2020 Academic Achievement banquet. I received over 40 student nominations to receive this award.
The Rumpus' "This Week in Essays" featured a micro-essay I published in The Paris Review following the 2019 Easter bombings in Sri Lanka. The Rumpus is a well-read online publication with a 3.01% acceptance rate according to Duotrope.
I was invited to read a micro-essay published in The Paris Review following the 2019 Easter bombings in Sri Lanka at a candlelight vigil held in Union Square, New York City for the victims of the attacks. The vigil was covered by several local and international news outlets, including: Tamil Guardian, NY City Lens, The Juggernaut, and PIX 11.
Along with other experts on trolling culture and digital aggression, I was invited to contribute an op-ed to The New York Times Room for Debate. As I was a doctoral student at the time, the fact that my work was solicited for a mainstream popular publication attests to the early and ongoing impact of my research trajectory; therefore, although this publication took place prior to my appointment at Pace, I am including it here.