Vani Kannan
Assistant Professor
ContactPronouns: she/they | EducationB.A., Barnard College |
Biography
Vani Kannan’s research interests include transnational/women-of-color feminisms, community literacies, multimodal/multigenre composition, social-justice-oriented writing pedagogies, and Asian/Asian American rhetorics. She is on the steering committee for the Women’s and Gender Studies program and teaches a range of courses that include Writing and Social Issues, Women in Literature (with a focus on women-of-color writers), Creative Nonfiction, Research Rhetoric and Writing Studies, and graduate-level courses in Rhetoric and Composition. Her work has appeared in Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, Writers: Craft & Context, Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, Studies on Asia, and the edited collection The Political Turn in the Trump Era: Writing, Democracy, Activism. Additionally, she has co-authored articles for Journal of Writing Assessment, Community Literacy Journal, Reflections: Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning, Literacy in Composition Studies, and Journal of Academic Freedom. Her current project, Writing Mutiny: Rhetoric, Transnationalism, and Asian Coalitional Organizing in the U.S., engages with histories of Asian American anti-racist coalitional activism, rhetoric, and writing through qualitative interviews and archival research.
Selected Publications
- “Hate Crimes and the Contradictions of ‘Brownwashed’ Conservatism.” Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, vol. 9, issue 1, 2021.
- “Archives and the Labor of Building Feminist Theory: A Conversation with Sharon Davenport.” Writers: Craft & Context, vol. 1, issue 2.
- “Taking a Lead from Student Movements in a ‘Political Turn.’” Writing Democracy: The Political Turn in and Beyond the Trump Era, edited by Shannon Carter, Deborah Mutnick, Stephen Parks, and Jessica Pauszek, Routledge, 2019, pp. 130-137.
- "The Mahamantra, Kirtan Performance, and the Embodied Circulation of Cultural Rhetoric." Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture vol. 2, 2016.
- "'Model Minority' or Potential Terrorist? Affective Economies, Rhetorics of Silence & the Murder of Sunando Sen." Studies on Asia vol. 4, issue 1, 2014, pp. 7-43.
