Scholar · Teacher · Writer

James L. Dunn Jr. PhD Candidate in Composition & Applied Linguistics

Centering literacy as liberation — examining how marginalized students navigate time, language, and identity within institutional spaces.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania City College of New York · Medgar Evers College · Pace University MLA Global English Forum, Chair Council on Basic Writing, Executive Board

Enter

"The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy."

— bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

About

A Life in
Language

James L. Dunn Jr. is a PhD candidate (ABD) in Composition and Applied Linguistics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where his dissertation examines corequisite education, chrononormativity, and the politics of acceleration at CUNY.

A teacher-scholar rooted in the CUNY tradition, James brings over fifteen years of composition and literacy instruction across New York City's most diverse and vital colleges. His scholarly identity is shaped by a deep commitment to critical pedagogy, translingual practice, and the affective and spiritual dimensions of literacy — what it means for a marginalized student to find voice, self, and possibility through language.

Before entering the academy, James worked as a digital journalist, editor, and content producer — with roles at Congressional Quarterly, American Visions Magazine, McGraw-Hill/BusinessWeek, and Ogilvy & Mather. That professional writing background animates his scholarship and his classroom, where he insists that students are already writers.

He lives in Sugar Hill, Harlem, New York City.

Research

Scholarly
Identity

A literacy scholar working at the intersections of basic writing, critical pedagogy, translingual practice, contemplative literacy, and queer and critical race frameworks — centering the affective, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of language for marginalized learners.

Central Question: Who gets to be fully human in institutional spaces?

Basic Writing Theory & Pedagogy

Rooted in Mina Shaughnessy's foundational work and the CUNY open admissions tradition. Published with the Journal of Basic Writing since 2018.

Critical Pedagogy & Literacy

Drawing on Freire, bell hooks, and transformative learning theory to position literacy as liberation and resistance to diminishment.

Translingual Practice & World Englishes

Engaging Canagarajah's translanguaging frameworks with productive critical distance. Examining whose language counts in academic spaces.

Critical Race Theory

Naming the structural dimensions of who gets labeled remedial, behind, or deficient — and the racialization of literacy standards.

Contemplative Pedagogy & Writing

Centering presence, reflection, and inner life as legitimate educational domains — particularly for students for whom the contemplative space may be the first site of safety.

Queer Theory & Adult Learning

Deploying queer temporality and chrononormativity to examine who gets to move at their own pace — and whose timeline institutions deem normative.

Dissertation in Progress

Metric Time and Jagged Lives: Corequisite Education, Chrononormativity, and the Politics of Acceleration at CUNY

Chair Dr. Curt Porter

Committee Dr. Driscoll · Dr. Gleason (outside reader)

Institution Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Status ABD · Three-chapter defense in progress

This dissertation examines CUNY's corequisite education reform through the theoretical lens of chrononormativity — the assumption that all students move through educational time at the same pace, on the same schedule, toward the same destinations.

Drawing on narrative inquiry, autoethnography, and critical pedagogy, the project centers students whose lives are "jagged" — nonlinear, interrupted, accelerated by circumstance — and asks what it means to impose metric time on lives that do not conform to institutional chronologies.

The work develops an original theoretical vocabulary for understanding time, power, and educational access: Temporal Apartheid, Compression Chamber, and Tactical Synchronicity.

Chrononormativity Temporal Apartheid Compression Chamber Tactical Synchronicity Narrative Inquiry Autoethnography Critical Pedagogy

Scholarship

Publications

2026

Book Chapter

"Teaching and Learning in Three Institutional Contexts"

Basic Writing in the 21st Century, edited by Laura Gray-Rosendale and Barbara Gleason. Peter Lang, 2026, pp. 399–415.

2023

Co-authored Chapter

"Linguistic Instrumentalism"

With Islam Farag and Marcela Hebbard. Critical Pedagogy in the Language and Writing Classroom: Strategies, Examples, Activities from Teacher Scholars, edited by Gloria Park, Sarah Bogdan, Madeleine Rosa, and Joseph Navarro. Routledge, 2023.

2018

Peer-Reviewed Article

"Forming Adult Educators: The CCNY MA in Language and Literacy"

Journal of Basic Writing, Vol. 37, No. 2, Fall 2018. The City University of New York.

Pedagogy

Teaching

"For me, teaching is a spiritual reckoning with what makes us human: the desire for self-determination and self-actualization. My hope is that my students leave the classroom changed."

City College of New York

CUNY

Lecturer, English

First-Year Writing
Composition & Rhetoric
Literature courses

Medgar Evers College

CUNY · Brooklyn, NY

Lecturer, English

First-Year Composition
Basic Writing
Literature

Pace University

New York, NY

Adjunct Associate Professor of English

Composition & Rhetoric
Writing & Research
Literature

Community Education

Adult Literacy

James has worked in adult literacy education serving New York City's most underserved communities — adults pursuing GED credentials, basic skills development, and the foundational literacy that opens doors to employment, civic participation, and further education.

This community-based work is not separate from his scholarship — it is its living laboratory. The adults in these programs embody the "jagged lives" at the center of his dissertation: learners whose educational timelines have been interrupted by circumstance, labor, caregiving, incarceration, immigration, and poverty. They return to learning on their own terms, in their own time.

Working directly with adult learners has deepened James's conviction that literacy is never merely functional — it is personal, spiritual, and transformative. It is how people reclaim authorship of their own stories.

Leadership & Service

In the
Profession

MLA Global English Forum

Chair

Leading scholarly conversation on global Englishes, translingual practice, and language diversity within the Modern Language Association.

Council on Basic Writing

Executive Board Member

Shaping national discourse on basic writing pedagogy, access, and equity in higher education.

Errors in Our Expectations: Mina Shaughnessy & Basic Writing 50 Years Later

Conference Co-Chair

Co-chairing a landmark conference at City College of New York marking fifty years since Shaughnessy's foundational work. Co-chair: Dr. Missy Watson.

MLA Annual Convention 2027

Panel Organizer

Organizing guaranteed AI and composition panel featuring scholars Islam, Fedtke, and Giraud.

Connect

Get in Touch

James welcomes correspondence regarding teaching, scholarship, speaking engagements, and collaborative projects in composition, basic writing, and literacy studies.

Email jld@professorjamesdunn.com Conference cunycompositionconference.com CV Download Curriculum Vitae

"My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

— Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers