Jill Belli, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, CUNY (City University of New York) and Co-Director of OpenLab, the college’s open-source digital platform for teaching, learning, and collaborating. She is a founding member of the Writing Studies Tree, an online, open-access, interactive academic genealogy for the field of writing studies, and she serves on the Steering Committee, the Teaching Committee, and as the web developer for the North American Society for Utopian Studies.

That’s me, a few winters ago, in front of a big ol’ rubber ducky (part of an art installation for a big festival) in Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia!

I did my doctoral work at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and my current research interests are in utopian studies, happiness studies/positive psychology, composition and rhetoric, digital humanities, American studies, and the scholarship of teaching and learning (feel free to ask me what any of these areas are!).

I played ice hockey in college (right wing), and have played the violin since I was two years old (and currently play in the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra). I practice yoga pretty regularly, love Thai food (the spicier the better!), kale, & tzatziki, and adore watching old sitcoms from the 70s and 80s (some of my favorites are Maude, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Soap, All in the Family, The Golden Girls, The Facts of Life, & Family Ties)!

I also really enjoy travelling: this summer I spent five weeks wandering abroad, in Russia, Finland, Czech Republic, and Switzerland (some of it was for conferences/work, some for vacation/fun)!

I look forward your reading your Introductions and getting to know you, first virtually and then in person, as the semester progresses