Brian Kelley
Assistant Professor
Academic Literacy and Linguistics
EMAIL: bkelley@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: N-499U
Office Hours: Fall 2024: Monday 5-6 pm (Fiterman); Tuesday 4:30-5:30 (Fiterman); Thursday 3-4 pm (Zoom - see link on Brightspace)
Phone: +1 (212) 220-1420
Four-Word Pedagogy: Love is our survival (adapted from Audre Lorde, “The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival.”)
Brian Kelley is an Assistant Professor of Academic Literacy & Linguistcs. He identifies as a cis-gender queer male and typically uses pronouns of he/him/his, though, like most members of the queer community, he is fine with any pronouns so long as they are used without harmful intent. You are welcome to refer to him as Brian, Dr. Kelley, Professor Kelley, Mr. Kelley, Professor Brian, Professor, Mister, “Prof”, or even just Kelley. Again, as long as the intent is appropriate, he will respond.
Dr. Kelley is founder and coordinator of the Queer Communities Faculty Interest Group, is a SafeZone ally, and is working with Kathleen Dreyer and Jean Amaral on the development of a children’s and young adult literature review center. He is also working with a committee on establishing a Pride Mentoring Network and a Pride Reading Group. At BMCC he has had the good fortune to write the courses, ACL 125: Introduction to the Study of Literacy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives; ACL 175: Literacy and Language Practices of Activism & Social Change; ACL 195: Literacy, Development, and Social Justice; ACL 200: Literacy Practices: Birth through Adolescence; ACL 250: Literacy & Language Disabilities; CRT 196: Critical Thinking: Inquiry through Queer Theories; CRT 200: Introduction to Semiotics; CRT 300: Being Bodies: Discourses & Rhetorics of (Dis)Ability, Illness, Trauma, Violence, and Healing; LIN 300: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, and a number of other courses. He has aalso ssisted in developing numerous other courses, particularly ACL 150: Literacy in the United States.
Dr. Kelley was also the lead in the development of the Literacy Studies program and serves as program coordinator. He developed multiple courses for the program as well as steering the committee and securing the articulation and transfer agreements. He is currently working on grants and internship partnerships to support students in the program. For more information on the program, click here: https://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/academics/departments/academic-literacy/literacy-studies/
Please click here to read a BMCC newsletter article about the program: https://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/news/literacy-studies-degree-program-prepares-graduates-to-apply-global-and-interdisciplinary-perspective-to-tackle-social-issues-and-more/
Dr. Kelley is also co-coordinator of the BMCC Pride Alliance, founding and coordinating the Queer Communities Faculty & Staff Interest Group and co-leading numerous projects, including securing monies for LGBTQIA+ programming at BMCC. For more information, please visit: https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/queer-pride-alliance/
Brian is an avid collector of movies and video games (almost every console and hand-held system back to Atari), and he has two dogs – Stripe, a lab/pointer mix; and Álainnscáth (Irish for beautiful shadow; pronounced “awlin scawth”), a Kunming Wolfdog (a Chinese breed of shepherd). Stripe is named after the gremlin as he is quite mischievous; Álainnscáth is named after his deceased mother, Linda.
Some of his favorite books include: Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and other works by Shelley (apropos of the time); Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues; Audre Lorde’s collection of poetry as well as her Zami: A New Spelling of My Name and Cancer Journals; the anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color; Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray; Naeem Murr’s The Boy; the writings of Catherynne Valente; the writings of Benjamin Alire Saénz; the writings of Mary Renault; the DiscWorld books. Also, older comic books from the 80s-early 00s (specifically, X-Men) as well as Batman, Dick Tracy, and the entire Malibu Comics range.
Dr. Kelley also founded and coordinates the Comics Studies Facukty & Staff Interest Group.
Expertise
Dr. Kelley is a scholar of literacy studies (the study of literacy practices, like reading and writing, as social acts), linguistics, and queer & gender studies. He also has a background in teaching and researching children’s and young adult literature (particularly in sequential art narrative), composition and rhetoric, and education, particularly in the fields of adolescent English education and literacy education. More broadly, his interests focus on the interdisciplinary topics of queerness, affect, discourse, and trauma.
Interview with Lynn McGee, BMCC Public Affairs (June 2023):
Degrees
Ph.D., Language & Literacy, Fordham University, 2015
Dissertation: Readers’ Affective Reactions and Responses When Engaged in the Literary Reading of Sequential Art Narrative
MA, Reading Specialist, New Jersey City University, 2008
BA, English (Honors) with a Minor in Women’s and Gender Studies, 2002
Honors Thesis: Reading (Post-)Colonial Performances of Anthologized “America”ness: Setting the Textual Stage of the “American” Literary Tradition
Courses Taught
- This advanced reading course is designed to help students master a full range of college-level reading and related skills, including critical comprehension, vocabulary, writing, flexible rates of reading, and study strategies. A variety of college-level materials is used.
- Reflecting on activist texts and language events as part of the literacy traditions of democracy, students will examine, through critical literacy perspectives, how activism and activist practice are situated as literacy practices. Students will learn about the links between literacy and activism. Through frameworks like discourse and rhetorical analysis, students will critically analyze how identity and agency/empowerment are enacted in a broad range of activist texts and language events from across the globe. Specifically, students will analyze the varied ways that diverse activists with different perspectives employ a tradition of discursive and rhetorical strategies to create their movements in conversation with historic and contemporary texts/language events of social change.
- In this course, students will examine how, in both “developed” and “developing” contexts, local, national, and global policies and institutions affect an individual’s socialization into and acquisition of literacy (e.g., in educational and social contexts). Specifically, students will examine how socialization into and acquisition of literacy relate to the civic participation and socioeconomic opportunities of members of marginalized and minority communities (e.g., communities organized around gender, class, colonial status, race/ethnicity/tribal affiliation, sexuality, and/or religious sect). Students will analyze, through intersectional and postcolonial lenses, how cultural conventions (e.g., norms, prejudices, hierarchies, and traditions) influence and are influenced by local, national, and global policies related to literacy practices and education (particularly as they relate to gender). Further, students will examine how, in an increasingly globalized and neocolonial world, conceptions of and access to literacies can affect a) the maintenance of cultural values and practices and b) an individual’s rights, agency, and mobility (particularly as these phenomena relate to gender). Emphasis will be on how literacy acquisition, civic participation, social justice, and socioeconomic opportunities relate to how gendered individuals are valued, perceived, and defined in various cultural contexts.
- This course is designed to help students understand a) how diverse children and adolescents learn, acquire, and utilize literacy skills and engage in literacy practices in varied contexts and b) how to support children's literacy and development through culturally relevant practices. Students will analyze how cultural values affect beliefs about what it means to be literate in childhood and adolescence, and students will examine the relationship between cultural values, literacy practices, families, and communities. Students will practice meaningful strategies that will help them understand how to integrate literacy into family and community-based settings.
- Critical Thinking (Same as CRT 100) is designed to develop the mind and help students learn to think clearly and effectively. Through substantive readings, structured writing assignments and ongoing discussions, students will examine concrete examples from their own experience and readings and contemporary issues in the media to learn how to analyze issues, solve problems, and make informed decisions in their academic, professional, and personal lives.
- 3 CRS.6 HRS.NULL LAB HRS.CRT 100.5 (Critical Thinking for Reading and Writing (Same as CRT 100))
- This course combines Critical Thinking (CRT 100) with Academic and Critical Reading and Writing. Critical Thinking is designed to develop the mind and help sharpen students' ability to think clearly, logically, thoroughly, critically, and effectively. Through substantive readings, structured writing assignments and ongoing discussions, students will learn to use analytical skills in reading, writing, oral presentations, researching, and listening. Students will examine concrete examples from their own experience and readings and contemporary issues in the media to learn how to analyze issues, solve problems, and make informed decisions their academic, professional, and personal lives. While studying Critical Thinking, students will also study advanced level reading and writing to master and apply a full range of college-level reading and writing skills, including critical comprehension, flexible rates of reading, essay organization, paragraph development, sentence structure, vocabulary and word choice, content, and study strategies. Students will receive an earned grade in CRT 100.5 which is equivalent to a grade earned in CRT 100.
This is an accelerated course that combines credit-bearing and developmental content. Passing CRT 100.5 meets the reading and writing proficiency milestone requirements; students who pass CRT 100.5 are exempt from further developmental reading and writing courses. CRT 100.5 may not be taken by students who have passed CRT 100 or ACR 95 or are exempt from Reading and Writing.
Please note: Tuition for this corequisite course is charged by the equated credit (hours) not per credit. - In this course, students will build and apply critical thinking skills, including making and evaluating arguments, to questions of social inequalities, especially those related to race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Using a variety of historical, literary and theoretical texts, students will look at ways that existing power structures benefit some groups and limit or oppress others. Students will be asked to reflect on their own experiences and attitudes and consider what they can do to build a more just and equal society.
- This course engages students in critical inquiry through the lenses of queer theories (e.g., theories related to the LGBTQI + spectra). Emphasizing how queer theories help thinkers across disciplines engage in observing, viewing/positioning, examining, analyzing, and constructing queer subjects, this course asks students to examine how, within and between disciplines, a) thinkers' perceptions and investigations are influenced by ideologies related to queerness and b) thinkers employ queer theories to create diverse ways of seeing/thinking, constructing/creating about the body, gender, sex/sexuality/sexual identities. Particular attention will be paid to how queer subjects have been pathologized and marginalized and how ideologies about queer populations affect reception of creative, scholarly, and professional works.
- This course introduces students to the field of semiotics, or the study of signs. Students will be exposed to an array of topics, such as the relationship between signs and meaning, the creations and functions of structures. the performative nature of signs, the fictions and imaginings of language, the cultural reproduction of signs of oppression and privilege, and the development of linguistic and non-linguistic code (e.g., emoji). Students will examine key scholarship in the fields of semiotics (e.g., Saussure, Pierce, Barthes, Eco, as well as more contemporary scholars) and understand historic, contemporary, and emerging debates in the field. Special emphasis is on teaching students to employ semiotics as a lens to analyze an array of signs, codes, and related phenomena employed in their social worlds and/or communities of practice.
Prerequisite: ENG 100.5 or ENG 101 or department approval - This course serves as an introduction to the discourses and rhetorics of (dis)ability(e.g., physical and/or mental), illness, violence, and trauma, as informed by the fields of (dis)ability and violence studies and crip theory. Students will interrogate how individuals construct, through language, notions of the body, particularly the (dis)abled, ill, and/or violated body. Further, students will investigate language related to the ways that individuals experience and/or internalize traumas related to the body. Specifically, students will critically analyze the discursive relationships between institutional power and identification, empowerment, and agency. Studying a broad range of texts and speech events, particular emphasis will be placed on the ways that individuals employ literacy and linguistic practices and events for purposes of healing.
Prerequisite: ENG 101 or departmental approval - This introductory level, interdisciplinary course explores the basic concepts and perspectives of Gender & Women's Studies from an intersectional angle; that is, examining the ways in which gender intersects with race, ethnicity, nationality, class, sexuality, sexual identity, disability, and other categories. The concepts of gender - the roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a society considers appropriate for men and women - privilege and oppression, intersectionality, and feminist praxis will be at the core of this course. After a background in the history and significance of Gender & Women's Studies as a field of study, you will learn to critically examine how institutionalized privilege and oppression shape individual lives and intersecting identity categories.
- The Gender and Womena??s Studies Capstone course will be a culmination and synthesis of studentsa?? work in the GWS program. Over the course of the semester, students will explore a topic in GWS in-depthI? they will sharpen their analytic abilities and critical thinking skills while engaging in an independent research and/or experiential learning project. Through course readings and individual and/or group work, students will apply interdisciplinary concepts, theories and methods to real life experiences, resulting in a research paper or project and a presentation to the class. Prerequisite: GWS 100 and two GWS electives
- This course will introduce the student to the study of Language and Culture. The course will introduce related topics, such as bilingual/bidialectal families and bilingual education, language and gender, literacy in a changing, technological society, child language acquisition, and different dialects and registers of English. The readings will draw on works in linguistics, literature and related fields. Students will work on critical reading and produce writing based on the readings in connections with their own experiences and backgrounds.
- This course will introduce students to linguistics, the scientific study of language. Students will apply methods of scientific inquiry (including the scientific method) to linguistic systems (phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic) and language phenomena and events. Specifically, students will engage in observation of linguistic phenomena, collection of data, generation and testing of hypotheses, analysis of and interpretations of data, application and evaluation of theory, in order to form conclusions about linguistic phenomena.
- This course explores historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives on the relationship between language, race, and ethnicity in the United States and its territories. It examines how language is understood to reflect, reproduce, and/or challenge and defy racial and ethnic boundaries, and how ideas about race and ethnicity influence the ways in which people use and construe language. It covers topics such as racialization and racism, ethnicization, notions of authenticity, repertoire, codeswitching and style shifting, linguistic mocking and linguistic racism, language ideology, and identity formation. This course will examine language varieties such as Black American English and its cross-racial uses by other groups, Chicano English and Spanglish, Hawaiian English, and American Indian English.
- The first part of this course introduces students to theories of first language acquisition (e.g., developmental sequence, innateness hypothesis). In the second part of the course, students will become familiar with the theories of second language acquisition and factors such as motivation, age, learning styles that affect language learning. Students will develop an awareness of processes involved in language acquisition, both first and second. Prerequisites: Any 100-level LIN course or Department Approval
- Through this course, students will analyze how power manifests itself through language and how people use language to create, reproduce, or resist/defy power. By studying the relationship between language and capital, language and institutionalized oppression (e.g. racism, ethnocentrism), and language and activism, students will explore the relationship between language, inequity, domination, and resistance. Students will analyze, through applying Critical Discourse Analysis to language events related to politics, policy, media, and institutional interaction, the power and perceived value of certain dialects and languages (e.g., discrimination towards and ideologies about languages/dialects). Students will engage with relevant critical social and linguistic theories relating to power. Prerequisites: ENG 100.5 or ENG 101 or Any 100-level LIN course or Departmental Approval
- This course introduces students to the study of language events related to gender and sexuality. Practicing framing, speech act analysis, and discourse analysis, students will examine the relationship between cultural values, language, gender, and sexuality. Students will analyze, with examples from global languages, how gender and sexuality affect language use and communities of practice as well as language affects understandings of gender and sexuality. Prerequisite: [ENG 100.5 or ENG 101] and LIN 100; or departmental approval
- This course asks students to investigate the varieties of literacy behaviors in American society as sociocultural phenomena. Students will be exposed to the research of major scholars in the interdisciplinary field of literacy research (e.g., New Literacy Studies) as a means of considering the role literacy and literacy behavior plays, both historically and in a contemporary context, in a diverse American society. Students will analyze the various definitions of literacy and track the development of multiple literacies in American society, specifically studying the transmission of literacy as a cultural value, particularly in oppressed communities. The course will provide the students with the opportunity to analyze and reflect on their personal relationship with literacy and opportunities for upward mobility in a stratified United States.
Research and Projects
Current projects include:
Affect, sexuality, and personal literacy practices
Affective inquiry, queerness, and the discourse of pedagogies of healing
Affect, queerness, and the literary reading of sequential art narrative
Queer linguistics, particularly as it pertains to discourse regarding the performance of anatomical gendering and racial fetishization in queer communities
Developmental writers’ motivation to write (expectancy-value theory) and its relationship to self-regulation
ConLang and teaching children/adolescents to be playful and creative with language
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Publications:
Kelley, B. (2021). An Argument for Affective Inquiry. New Jersey English Journal. 10, Article 9. https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/nj-english-journal/vol10/iss2021/9
Kelley, B. (2007). What’s the matter, Harry? Harry Potter and the social studies curriculum. New Jersey Journal of Reading, 1(2), 31-32.
Misir-Hiralall, S. D., & Kelley, B. (2007). Literature circles: Engaging students in discussion. New Jersey Journal of Reading, 1(2), 39-41.
Other Publications:
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching Bloomsbury USA’s Rapunzel’s Revenge. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching Bloomsbury USA’s Calamity Jack. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching First Second Books’ Brain Camp. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching First Second Books’ The Eternal Smile: Three Stories. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching First Second Books’ Koko Be Good. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching First Second Books’ Prime Baby. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching First Second Books’ The Professor’s Daughter. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching First Second Books’ The Three Shadows. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching Henry Holt’s Katman. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching Henry Holt’s Pedro & Me: A Story of Friendship and Loss. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching Marvel Comics’ X-Men: Endangered Species. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for teaching Marvel Comics’ X-Men: Magneto Testament. In J. B. Carter (Ed.). Rationales for teaching graphic novels. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.
Kelley, B. (2010). Rationale for Magneto Testament. SANE Journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education, 1(1), r7-r11. (Cited 3 times; Downloaded over 300 times)
Kelley, B. (2009). Sequential art, graphic novels, and comics: A position paper, Collaboratively Sponsored by the Legislative and Professional Standards Committee of the New Jersey Reading Association and the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Graphic Novels Special Interest Group of the IRA. (Paper endorsed by Gene Luen Yang, winner of Printz Award for American-Born Chinese.)
Also published in peer-reviewed SANE Journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education, 1(1). (Cited 26 Times; Downloaded over 10,000 times)
Informal Publication/Blog Post
Kelley, B. (2016). The role of affect in literary reading. Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday. Submitted at request of Dr. Steven Bickmore, moderator.
Teachers’ Guides/Lesson Plans:
Unpaid consultant, at request of author, to create Teachers’ Guide on Eric Velasquez’s Grandma’s Gift and Grandma’s Records (Walker Books for Young Children/Bloomsbury USA)
Scholastic – Paid consultant to create a Common Core-aligned Teachers’ Guide on volume 6 of graphic novel series, Amulet.
First Second Books/MacMillan Publishing – Paid consultant to create a Common Core-aligned Teachers’ Guide for graphic novel Boxers & Saints.
Kill Shakespeare/IDW Press – Unpaid consultant to create a Common Core-aligned Teachers’ Guide, at request of authors, Conor McCreery and Anthony del Cor, for Kill Shakespeare graphic novel series
Marvel Comics, Inc. – Paid consultant to create a Teachers’ Guides for X-Men: Magneto Testament on integrating the graphic novel in the classroom in a unit on Holocaust Studies (Teachers’ Guide for X-Men: Magneto Testament is published in the trade paperback book collecting all issues of the comic series)
Marvel Comics, Inc./Diamond Distributors – Paid consultant to create a Teachers’ Guide for Graphic Novels as well as three lesson plans for the Marvel Illustrated Series.
Bloomsbury USA – Paid consultant to create a Teachers’ Guide on Graphic Novels and two lesson plans on Twilight Zone graphic novel series
Honors, Awards and Affiliations
Reviewer, New Jersey English Journal
Reviewer, Study and Scrutiny
Founder & Chair, Queer Communities Faculty Interest Group
Member, International Literacy Association (formerly the International Reading Association)
Member, The National Council of Teachers of English
Member, Professional Staff Congress
Member, American Federation of Teachers
Additional Information
Founder & Coordinator, Coordinator, Queer Communities Faculty & Staff Interest Group
Founder & Coordinator, Comics Studies Faculty & Staff Interest Group
Co-Chair with Yukiya Shneyderman of SafeZone Education Committee
Co-Liaison with Yuliya Shneyderman to CUNY-Wide LGBTQIA+ Consortium
Co-Liaison to the CUNY-wide LGBTQIA+ Council
Mentor, Pride Mentoring Network
Secretary, College-Wide Curriculum Committee
