What I'm Currently Working On (upd. October 18, 2023):

  • Initial planning for the 2024 Atlanta Studies Symposium with the Organizing Committee representing GSU, GT, KSU, AUC, Spelman, UGA, and Emory
  • Teaching undergrad and grad Tech Writing for Data Science courses
  • Collecting applications for seed funding from the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network, courtesy of the Mellon Foundation
  • Drafting paper on radicalization language as a uniform using subejct positions and semantic role labels, w/ Weeda Mehran and Stephen Herron 

    What I was Working On (upd. April 25, 2023):

    • On Fellowship at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand
      • Guest lecturing in DIGI204 and WRIT401
    • Concluding Writing Atlanta (ENGRD380W)
    • Concluding Quantitative Literary Analysis (ENG790/QTM450) w/ Lauren Klein
    • Preparing curriculum for a new graduate technical writing course at Emory, QTM540, for the first MS cohort in Quantiative Social Science
    • Awaiting final word on the Mellon Funded Atlanta Interdisciplinary Artificial Intelligence Network with Lauren Klein (PI), Rico Chapman (Co-PI), Brandeis Marshall (Co-PI), Carl DiSalvo (Co-PI), and André Brock
    • Co-authoring new work with Weeda Mehran (Exeter) and Stephen Herron (Queen's Uni Belfast) on radicalization via internalized subject positions using Jinho Choi's ELit semantic role labeler
    • Awaiting the 10th annual Atlanta Studies Symposium, hosted this year by Georgia Tech's School of City and Regional Planning
    • Chairing the Emory Writing Program Postdoctoral Fellow search

    What I was Working On (upd. April 10, 2020):

    • Teaching Technical Writing for Quantitative Theory and Methods (ENG/QTM302w)
    • Teaching Advanced Writing Labs for QTM Capstones (ENG397) 
    • Teaching a seminar on Writing for Games (ENG380)
    • Co-authoring an article on machine learning and toxic speech moderation
    • Co-organizing the Narrative Understanding, Storylines, and Events workshop at ACL'20 (https://sites.google.com/view/nuse/)
    • Preparing a presentation on a machine learning based approach to veridicality (speaker certainty) assessment for DH2020
    • Editing the Atlanta Studies Journal (https://www.atlantastudies.org/)

      What I was Working On (upd. February 20, 2019):

      • Teaching Technical Writing for Quantitative Theory and Methods (ENG/QTM302w)
      • Teaching an Advanced Writing Lab for QTM Capstones (ENG397) 
      • Teaching a graduate seminar on Digital Humanities Theories and Methods (ENG790)
      • A paper on radicalization strategies and language use patterns for the upcoming International Studies Assoc. conference w/ Weeda Mehran and Haroon Qahtan
      • A proposal to the NEH-Mellon Fellowships for Digital Publication RFP on interactive criticism
      • Materials for the teaching of ethics in core CS curricula
      • A revision of an argument about Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" and post-war trauma
      • Extending work on understanding language patterns in weather journalism

      What I Was Working On (upd. May 13, 2018):

      • Events and Stories in the News Workshop at COLING 2018:  Computational Representation of News Events and Storylines.  <http://eventstory.news.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/>
      • "Conceptual Metaphors in the Propaganda of Radicalization of the Islamic State," a chapter of Terrorist Propaganda, Recruitment, and Radicalization.  
      • "Cross-Document Narrative Alignment of Environmental News: A Position Paper on the Challenge of Using Event Chains to Proxy Narrative Features"
      • "Writing for Games," an online summer course with the Creative Media Industries Institute at Georgia State University

       

      Bio

      In my work, I apply computational techniques to shed insight on basic communicative and textual phenomena such as discourse and narrative and I teach on theories and praxis in data science and the digital humanities.  Over 14 years as an academic professional at Emory University, Georgia State University, the University of North Florida, M.I.T., and the Georgia Institute of Technology, I have worked at the intersection of large-scale textual data analysis, interactive textual and visual systems, the domain of human rights, and the possibilities of new modes of analysis and communication dependent upon computation.  During that time, I have taught students from across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences to think more critically, question more productively, and write more clearly.

      Empirical work has helped me examine hate speech in the chat system of the world’s most popular online game; the evictions crisis in the 46th most populous U.S. county; the geography, temporality, and correlations represented by collections of hundreds to tens of thousands of witness statements; develop geospatial tools to support community storytelling; and teach undergraduates and graduates how to work in the digital humanities as creative and critical professionals.  My work had developed theories and methods for how one can read across collections and build stories from related fragments of text in the substantive area of human rights violations.  None of this research or teaching would have been possible without the generous support of my employers, and funding from the NSF, NEH, DoD, KNAW, and Knight Foundation.

      Currently, I am Associate Teaching Professor of Technical Writing and Digital Humanities with the Writing Program and the Department of Quantitative Theory and Methods at Emory University.