About Me:

​Hello! My name is Anna Zeemont and I'm a PhD student in the English program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where I concentrate in Composition-Rhetoric and American Studies.
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​Broadly speaking, I study literacy, particularly in urban educational settings such as CUNY.  I'm especially interested in interrogating how literacy practices are racialized or white-washed in college writing classrooms and other institutionalized spaces, and in exploring  decolonial and/or anti-racist approaches to teaching composition. I am committed to interdisciplinary research and draw on fields such as education, cultural studies, queer and feminist theories, and media studies.

I have presented (or will present) my research at several conferences and institutions, including the College Composition and Communication, Thomas R. Watson, and Rhetoric Society of America conferences.

​​I'm currently a composition instructor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. However, I have a long-standing interest in education. I've been teaching or tutoring in some capacity on and off since summer 2010, when I taught my first classes (intensive summer science courses for sixth/seventh graders). And while attending Oberlin College (where I earned my BA in English and Biology), I was a peer writing tutor and taught poetry through a collaboration between the college and a local middle school. Once I graduated, I returned to my hometown of Berkeley to continue working in secondary education in the Bay Area: I taught middle schoolers in Oakland and then worked with high school seniors at a nonprofit in San Francisco.

​All these experiences and all the students I've been lucky enough to work with have informed and shaped both my current teaching practice and research interests, which I see as deeply intertwined, if not inseparable. ​

A realistic portrait of me by a former student. Some context: I led an advisory
​of sixth grade girls called the Bubble Mustaches (they couldn't choose
​whether to be called Bubbles or Mustaches), and they were SO awesome. 

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​Being from the Bay is a huge part of my identity; I like to think of myself as bicoastal in spirit. Moving across the country for college and, later, for graduate school, has made me even more committed to repping my California roots: with the exception of New Yorkers, I haven’t met people who have such a sense of pride about where they’re from as folks from the Bay.

​With that said, I’ve really liked living in New York and, especially, have loved getting to know the CUNY system. I see teaching in CUNY as an enormous privilege, given its status as one of the largest and most diverse university systems in the country, and its legacy of student-led activism. It might be cheesy to say, but it’s also true: I learn constantly from my students, who inspire me and push my thinking every day. 

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Outside of research and teaching, one of my biggest passions is music, both playing and listening. I grew up in a musical household and started taking lessons and playing in school bands in elementary school. Throughout middle and high school, I played jazz somewhat seriously, which definitely informed my musical sensibility. In college, I taught myself guitar, which has become my primary instrument and songwriting vehicle today. 
 
I’m as passionate about finding and listening to music as I am about playing it. I love discovering music by browsing for records in stores, listening to local and online radio stations, and reading music blogs. And for years, I’ve loved making and exchanging mix CDs and playlists for friends and family, and honed this passion as a DJ for my college radio station. I hope to DJ for a community or college radio station in NYC at some point.

I've been trying to center music more in both my teaching and research - inspired by Elaine Richardson, Daphne Brooks, Emily Lordi, Angela Davis, and other media/cultural theorists and rhetoricians (especially scholars of African American women's literacies), I've come to think of performing and composing music, as well as DJing and making playlists, as writing or literate practices. 

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I like to think that I have somewhat eclectic music taste, but for the last few years, I’ve been especially into and inspired in my songwriting by music from the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to music blogs and friends’ recommendations, I’ve been introduced to a lot of soul and funk from this time through sampling in contemporary hip hop/R&B songs.

Given all of this, I was inspired to make a 1960s/1970s #BlackGirlMagic playlist featuring some of my favorite soul/funk songs and vocal (and in a few cases, instrumental) performances by Black women. Some of these songs/artists aren't as well-known anymore, which is something I love about accessing music online: it's helped me to discover artists that are new to me, and can help others preserve and promote artists so new listeners can find them.

​Let me know what you think of the playlist!