Kendall Dinniene
PhD Candidate
English
smu
Research
My dissertation examines how American fiction variously affirms, complicates, and resists dominant narratives of fatness, revealing how these narratives are intertwined with and produce ideas about race, gender, sexuality, health, (dis)ability, criminality, and national identity. I argue that how we understand literary representations of fatness is crucial to the way we understand (and make) our world.
Education
Phd in English
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas
(Expected 2025)
Master's in English
Southern Methodist University
(2023)
Bachelor's in english
Southern Oregon University
Ashland, OR
(2018)
Awards and Fellowships
Moody Graduate School outstanding graduate student instruction award
Southern Methodist University
2024
Nina Schwartz Graduate Student Teaching Award
Southern Methodist University
Department of English
2023
Robert L. Casebeer Poetry Award
Southern Oregon University
Department of English
2018 & 2017
Summer Research and Writing Fellowship
Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute, SMU
2024
Taos Summer writing seminar
Southern Methodist University
2020 & 2022
Black Feminist Theory Summer Institute
Duke University
2024
Bill Gholson Outstanding Critical Essayist in Literature Award
Southern Oregon University
Department of English
2018
Publications
"My Heart’s Fine as Long as My Stomach’s Not Empty": PATRIARCHAL Violence, Women’s Excess, and Fat liberation in criminally insane
“A sensual people, and doomed”: Anti-fatness and/as anti-mexican racism in america’s first mass medium
Ethnic Studies Review, revised & resubmitted
Wounding the heteropatriarchy: queer and disabled bodies in Forgetting the alamo and caballero
Studies in American Fiction, under review
Review of Dr. Sami Schalk’s Black Disability Politics
The Black Scholar, vol. 53, no. 3-4, 2023, pp. 133-136.
Reading Fat’s Surface
In progress
Review of Rev. Dr. E-K Daufin’s On Fat and Faith: Ending Weight Stigma in Yourself, Your Sanctuary, and Society.
Excessive Bodies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2023, pp. 259-264.
Read it here.
Agency, Consent, and Coercion in Kindred
In progress
Environmental Catastrophe, Obesity Panic, and Livestock
With Samantha Pergadia; in progress
Conferences
21st Century Speculative Fiction and Fat Futures
To be presented at the Canadian Sociological Association conference, Montreal, QC (July 2024)
Fat fugitivity in morrison's the bluest eye
Presented at the Arts of the Present conference, Seattle, WA (October 2023)
Environmental Catastrophe, Fatness, and Texas Beef in Ruth Ozeki’s My year of meats
To be presented at the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States conference, Dallas, TX (April 2024)
Fat fugitivity In the academy
Presented at the Arts of the Present conference, Seattle, WA (October 2023)
Fat Margins in Nalo Hopkinson’s Speculative Short Fiction
To be presented at the Modern Language Association conference, Philadelphia, PA (January 2024)
"See How Easily Slaves are Made?": Agency, Consent, and Coercion in Kindred
Presented at the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States conference, Indianapolis, IN (April 2023)
"Mammy in the Drawer": Venus of Chalk as Invitation to Reckon with the Anti-Blackness of Anti-Fatness
Presented at the Popular Culture Association conference, San Antonio, TX (March 2023)
"Telling Our Own Stories so They Won’t be Forgotten": Imagining Alternative Tejana Histories in Forgetting the Alamo
Presented at the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States conference, New Orleans, LA (March 2022)
Teaching Experience
ENGL 2315: Introduction to literary study
Spring 2024
Examines the formal and conceptual meaning of “home” in American cultural production, with attention to feminist, African American, and queer perspectives.
ENGL 2312: Introduction to fiction
Fall 2023
Introduces students to fatness in American fiction, with an emphasis on developing students' ability to analyze texts, understand form and genre, and think critically about dominant narratives of the body.
ENGL 1362:Speculative Fiction (TA)
Spring 2023
Introduces students to forms and concerns of speculative fiction and develops writing skills.
WRTR 1312: Introduction to Academic Writing
Fall 2020, 2021, 2022
Develops students' writing skills with an emphasis on analysis, style, and rhetoric.
WRTR 1313: Writing & Critical Thinking
Spring 2021, 2022
Develops students' writing and critical thinking skills culminating with a rigorously research argumentative paper.
Professional Activities
Southern Methodist University
English Graduate Organization, President (2023-2024)
Graduate Programming Committee, Graduate Student Representative (2023-2024)
Presenter of workshop titled “Course Prep 101: Effective Teaching Strategies for Graduate Student Teachers,” Center for Teaching Excellence (2023)
Teaching Effectiveness Symposium, Organizer (2023)
Student Engagement Institute, Presenter and Organizer (2023)
English Graduate Organization, Vice President (2021-2022)
Other professional activities
Regional Graduate Student Delegate for the Modern Language Association (2024-2027)
Organizer of panel titled “Fat Bodies in Speculative Space” for the Modern Language Association conference (2024)
Member of MLA (2020-present)
Member of MELUS (2021-present)
Syllabi
Spring 2024