SUSAN COOKE WEEBER
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow
Department of English
The Pennsylvania State University
430 Burrowes Building
University Park, PA 16802
[email protected]
EDUCATION
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 2012-2016
PhD, English Literature
Graduated August 2016
Dissertation: “Poetics of Interruption: Media and Form in Twentieth-Century American
Literature”
Committee:
Aldon Nielsen (Director), Linda Selzer, Benjamin Schreier, Kevin Bell, Nergis
Erturk (Comparative Literature)
Specialties:
20th- and 21st-century African American and American literature; critical race
theory; media studies; visual culture; prison literature and literacy; African
diaspora studies; Caribbean literature and culture
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 2010-2012
MA, English Literature
Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2006-2010
BA, English and Government
Magna cum laude; Honors in English; Phi Beta Kappa
St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, Oxford, England, 2008-2009
Courses in English Literature and Political Theory
PUBLICATIONS
Peer Reviewed Article
“Archival Impulses, Historical Anxieties: Preservation and Erasure in Philip K. Dick’s Martian
Time-Slip.” Critique 57.5 (2016): 579-588.
Interviews
“An Interview with John Keene,” Contemporary Literature 57.1 (Spring 2016): 1-29.
“The Far Side of Mastery: An Interview with Nathaniel Mackey,” co-interviewers Abram Foley,
Aldon Nielsen, Laura Vrana, ASAP/Journal 1.2 (Spring 2016).
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes in Haiti: Photography and Empire,” Modern
Language Association (MLA), 2016.
“Toussaint’s Ghosts,” MLA, 2016.
“The Dark Room Collective as Countercurrent,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the
Present (ASAP), 2015.
“Photographic Poetics in John Keene’s Annotations,” Louisville Conference on Literature and
Culture since 1900, 2015.
“The Archive in Crisis: Samuel Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand,” American
Literature Association (ALA), African American Literature and Culture Society panel, 2014.
“Vagabond Aesthetics,” College Language Association (CLA), 2014.
“The Body as Cultural Archive: Langston Hughes’s Performance of the Haitian Revolution,”
CLA, 2013.
Panel Respondent, “’Global’ Narrative Vision and Its Discontents,” Louisville Conference on
Literature and Culture since 1900, 2013.
“’We carry him with us’: Revolutionary Time and the Ghosts of Toussaint L’Ouverture,”
Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, 2013.
“The Crisis of Ahab: Mariners, Renegades and Castaways and the Schizophrenia of Modern
America,” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, 2012.
“‘Everything passed us by’: Disillusioned Masculinity in the Hip Hop Generation,” Celebrating
African American Literature and Language (CAALL), 2011.
Conferences Planned and Panels Chaired
Panel Convener and Chair, “Black Radical Experimentation,” CAALL, 2016.
Panel Chair, “Remediations and the Poetics of Dwelling,” ASAP, 2015.
Conference Organizer and Planner, “New Perspectives on Violence and Revolution in the
African Diaspora,” Richards Center and Africana Research Center, Pennsylvania State
University, 2014.
Panel Moderator, “Poetry and Identity,” CAALL, 2013.
Panel Chair, “Closing Time: Periodization and American Literary Studies,” Rising Early: An
Imaginary Vistas Symposium, University Park, PA, November 2-3, 2012.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Writing and/in/on Film (Spring 2017, enrollment 24)
Honors first-year rhetoric and composition course on film studies. Students will be introduced to film criticism and
theory; writing assignments will focus on rhetorical approaches to film; final assignment is a short film that makes
a definition argument for a specific audience and purpose with a cover letter explaining formal choices, intedended
purpose, and rhetorical appeals to audience.
The Black Radical Tradition (Spring 2017)
Introductory African American Studies course. Materials include a range of theoretical, political, activist,
historical, and literary texts as well as films, visual art, music, and cultural objects and spaces. Authors and
artists include W.E.B. DuBois, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, CLR James, Cedric Robinson, Robin D.G.
Kelley, Lloyd Brown, Angela Y. Davis, Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Richard Wright, bell hooks,
Audre Lorde, the Black Audio Film Collective, Kara Walker, Sun Ra, George Clinton, Janelle Monaé,
Kendrick Lamar, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Nikki Giovanni, M. NourbeSe Philip, Claudia Rankine,
Fred Moten, Frantz Fanon, Toussaint Louverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines, Nat Turner, Kyle Baker,
Edouard Glissant, Alain Locke, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Aimé Césaire, Leopold Senghor, and others.
English 201: What Is Literature? (1 section, enrollment 25)
Required course for English majors focused on introducing students to the specifics of literary objects as well as
literary critical questions and methodologies. Course readings included largely African American novels, graphic
novels, and poetry, as well as three films. Required course for English majors focused on introducing students to
the specifics of literary objects as well as literary critical questions and methodologies. Using texts that push
generic boundaries, we discuss literary form, the relationship between literature and politics, the ethical efficacy of
literature, the effects of media and remediation.
Women Writers: “Madwomen and Strange Fictions” (1 section, enrollment 30)
Course on women writers for underclassmen and upperclassmen, majors and non-majors; special focus on genre
and experimental writing; cross-listed in English and Women’s Studies. Course readings covered African
American, Latina, Asian-American, and Jewish-American novels, poetry, graphic novels, film, and television.
“Writing the Prison” (1 section, enrollment 24)
Honors first-year rhetoric course about the prison system, writing produced by inmates, and the intersections
between crime, education, gender, race, economics, and the legal system. Materials included a mix of literature,
theory, and political and social rhetoric as well as films and cultural objects.
Co-Instructor, First-Year Composition Teacher Training (1 section, enrollment 35)
Pedagogy course for new instructors of first-year composition, co-taught with the Director and Assistant Director
of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric.
Teaching Assistant, Science Fiction (1 section, enrollment 60)
Introduction to science fiction taught by Michael Bérubé. Materials included a range of traditional and
experimental science fiction novels, as well as three film adaptations.
Technical Writing (English 202C) (3 section, enrollment 24)
Technical writing course for upper-level science and applied science majors; one continuing education section.
Advanced Writing in the Humanities (2 sections, enrollment 24)
Writing course for upper-level humanities undergraduates; special focus on institutional logic, discipline-specific
discourse, and the language of the humanities crisis.
First-Year Composition (8 residential sections, 2 online sections, enrollment 24)
First-year rhetoric and composition course required for all majors; one special section with an emphasis on
political writing and institutional logics; one section on literature of the Americas; one section on photography and
visual culture and rhetoric; one section on archival research and cultural studies (which culminated with an
intensive, two-part archival project).
AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
Dissertation Support Grant, Research and Graduate Studies Organization (RGSO), Pennsylvania State
University, Spring 2016
Dissertation Fellowship, Africana Research Center (ARC), Pennsylvania State University, 2015
Graduate Student Summer Residency, Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH), Pennsylvania State
University, 2015
Research Grant, Africana Research Center, Pennsylvania State University, 2014
Center for American Literary Studies Travel Grant, Pennsylvania State University, 2014
NEH Summer Institute, Contemporary African American Literature, 2012
Master of Arts Excellence in Teaching Award, Department of English, Pennsylvania State University,
2012
University Graduate Fellowship, Pennsylvania State University, 2010
Lola G. Duff and William H. Duff, II Scholarship Fund, 2006-2010
Eleanor Friedberg Art Scholarship, Pittsburgh Foundation, 2006
ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
Pennsylvania State University
Teaching Mentor, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, 2014—2015; 2016—present
Mentor 3-6 new teachers of composition and rhetoric; organize group meetings to address teaching
concerns and discuss pedagogy; observe mentees’ teaching and provide them with feedback and suggestions
to improve; report on meetings and mentees’ progress to the Program in Writing and Rhetoric.
Administrative Assistant, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, 2013—2014
Designed curriculum for all freshmen composition courses taught by new instructors; co-taught the
pedagogy course for new instructors; discussed and solved pedagogical and administrative issues with
teachers and program administrators; managed and oversaw teaching mentors; participated in strategy
meetings discussing the future of composition instruction in the university.
Instructor, Department of English, 2010—present
Georgetown University
Research Assistant to Dr. Lyndon Dominique, Department of English, 2007-2008
Researched representations of black women in 18th-century British literature for Imoinda's Shade:
Marriage and the African Woman in Eighteenth-Century British Literature, 1759-1808
(Ohio State University Press, 2012).
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES AND SERVICE
National
Special Interest Delegate: Graduate Students, Modern Language Association, 2015-2018
Pennsylvania State University
Member, Job Search Committee for Assistant Professor of Latino/a Literature, 2014-2015
Evaluated all application materials; interviewed candidates at MLA; met with and assessed final
candidates during campus visits; attended department meetings during voting.
Representative, Graduate Studies Committee, 2014-2015
Evaluated applications to the English graduate program; voted on final candidates receiving offers;
organized recruitment visits and activities; communicated with recruits to answer questions and connect
them with faculty and graduate students in their fields; discussed and voted on course offerings in the
graduate program.
President, English Graduate Organization, 2013-2014
Undergraduate Thesis Adviser, School of Visual Arts, 2013-2014
Advised a student from my Advanced Writing in the Humanities class on her final film thesis.
Co-Founder and Co-Chair, Diaspora Studies Workshop, 2012-2014
Founded an interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students in order to foster collaboration
between scholars working on the African diaspora and critical race theory in departments across the
university that are normally isolated; organized monthly workshops and panels for graduate student and
faculty works-in-progress.
PhD Representative, English Graduate Organization, 2012-2013
Leader, African American Literature Reading Group, 2011-2013
Incoming Graduate Student Mentor, 2011-2013
Georgetown University
Coordinator and Tutor, BearPaw Tutoring, Washington, DC, 2009-2010
Tutored elementary students in math and English; coordinated a group of tutors from Georgetown.
Math and Reading Tutor, For Love of Children, Washington, DC, 2007-2008
Tutor, Prison Outreach Program, Arlington County Detention Facility, Arlington, VA, 20062008
Tutored inmates in English as a second language and in GED preparation (for both the verbal and
math portions of the test).
Community Service
Mentor, Big Brothers Big Sisters, 2015—
Head Coach, Girls Soccer Team, Grace Prep High School, 2013-2015
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Member, African American Literature and Culture Society (AALCS), 2014—
Member, American Studies Association (ASA), 2016—
Member, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP), 2015—
Member, College Language Association (CLA), 2012—
Member, Modern Language Association (MLA), 2013—