Rebecca Devers Mazumdar, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of English
Director, First-Year Writing
New York City College of Technology, City University of New York
300 Jay Street, Namm 512, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Education
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT (Ph.D, English; May 2010). Dissertation: The Iron Curtain in the Picture Window: Cold War Homes in American Fiction and Popular Culture (Advisor: Brenda Murphy; Committee: Jerry Phillips, Donna Hollenberg)
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT (M.A., English; May 2003)
Transylvania University, Lexington, KY (B.A., English, Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, May 2000)
Awards and Honors
New York City College of Technology 2022-2023 Teacher Recognition Award. Selected by the Professional Development Advocacy Council. See the article published on City Tech’s website.
Assessment Leadership Award, New York City College of Technology. Spring 2017.
Academic Publications
“Teaching with Technology: Using a Virtual Learning Community and Peer Mentoring to Create an Interdisciplinary Intervention.” Co-authored with Nadia Benakli and Pamela Brown. Science Education and Civic Engagement: An International Journal 11.1 (Winter 2019). Click here to read.
“Miracle Kitchens and Bachelor Pads: The Competing Narratives of Modern Spaces” (invited book chapter). InHabit. Eds. Jane Anderson, Antony Buxton, and Linda Hulin. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2017. 153-171. Click here to read.
“An Interview with J. Aaron Sanders, author of Speakers of the Dead.” NANO: New American Notes Online. June 2016. Click here to read.
“An Interview with Martha J. Cutter, Former Editor of MELUS.” NANO: New American Notes Online. October 2014. Click here to read.
“‘You don’t prepare breakfast … you launch it like a missile’: The Cold War Kitchen and Technology’s Displacement of Home.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 to Present) 13.1 (Spring 2014). Click here to read.
“‘I know how to do the play now’: A Part of Willy Loman in Synecdoche, New York.” The Arthur Miller Journal 6.2 (Fall 2011): 25-45. Click here to read.
“Sea, The Beats at.” Encyclopedia entry. Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons, and Impact. Ed. William Lawlor. Santa Barbara:ABC-CLIO, 2005. 322-323. Click here to read.
Creative Work
Breaking News (short play). Performed as part of Articulate Theatre Company’s ON-AIR/On-Stage: The Holiday Radio Plays, 14-17 Dec 2017, New York, NY.
Self-Published Work
Matters of Taste, a food and travel blog, est. 2017.
Conference Presentations
Forthcoming: “Discovering/Desiring/Devouring the Other: The Outsider Storyteller and Ethnographic Cookbooks.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. 7-9 January, 2024. Philadelphia, PA.
“Rice Stories: Rituals of Prosperity and Fertility.” Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. 7-9 July, 2023, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, UK; and 16-30 July, 2023, online.
“Modern Refrigerators and the Preservation of the American Dream.” Representations of Home in Literatures and Cultures in English; (Dis)locations: The Shifting Thematics of Home. 22-23 June, 2023. School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Portugal.
“Through the Stomach: Food Fiction as Feminist Subterfuge in the Novels of Sally Andrew and Bonnie Garmus.” Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Conference, 17-20 November, 2022, Minneapolis, MN.
“A Taste of Privilege: Toward an Ethics of Gastro-Tourism.” International Conference on Food Studies: “Culinary Evolutions.” London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research: 20-21 August, 2022 (online).
“‘Get busy with the can opener, will you, Sally?’: The Legacy of the Fallout Shelter in Contemporary Prepper Foodways.” Devouring Men: Food, Masculinity and Power. University of St. Andrews, September 4, 2020 (online).
“‘Immediately dismissed as fiction’: Technology Mediates the Graphic in Sabrina.” Contemporary American Fiction in the Face of Technical Innovation. Sorbonne Nouvelle and Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis Universities, Paris, France, January 23-25, 2020.
“Captivation: Television’s Imprisoned Women as Comic Revisions of Early American Captivity Narratives.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, New York, NY, 4-7 Jan 2018.
“Ali as Teacher: Bringing the Champ into a Composition Classroom.” Paper presented at Ali in Un/Expected Spaces Symposium, University of Turku (Finland), 17-19 May 2017. Watch the presentation here.
“Visions of King Joe Oliver: Recorded Improvisation and Narrative.” Northeastern Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Convention, Hartford, CT, 17-20 Mar 2016.
“‘You could almost touch Time’: Jeremiadic Synchronicity in Cold War Science Fiction.” American Literature Association Symposium on War and American Fiction, New Orleans, LA, 10-12 Oct 2013.
“Cozying Up with the Cold War: Articulating a Theory of Atomic Age Domestic Space.” New York City College of Technology Faculty Research Conference, Brooklyn, NY, 5 Apr 2013.
“Miracle Kitchens and Bachelor Pads: The Competing Narratives of Modern Spaces.” Spatial Perspectives: Literature and Architecture, 1850-Present, Oxford, UK. 22 Jun 2012.
“Homes within Homes: Private Fallout Shelters and the Mythology of Ideal Domesticity in 1950s America.” 42nd Annual Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Convention, New Brunswick, NJ. 9 Apr 2011.
“‘Everyone’s the Star of their Own Play’: Using Synecdoche, New York to Teach Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.” International Conference on American Drama, Union, NJ. 30 Oct 2010.
“Composition and Careers: Taking Writing Beyond WAC and WID and into the Working World.” Freshman English Conference on the Teaching of Writing, University of Connecticut at Storrs. Mar 2009.
“‘It does have the picture window; I guess there’s no escaping that’: Politics, Idealized Domesticity, and the Cold War American Living Room.” Southwest / Texas Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association, Albuquerque, NM. Feb 2009.
“House as Celebration and Rejection of Technology in Bradbury and Wylie.” Southwest / Texas Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association. Albuquerque, NM. Feb 2008.
“Correction in the Writing Process: Tutors versus Editors.” Northeastern Writing Centers Association Conference, Universityof Connecticut at Storrs. Mar 2007.
“That ‘feeling that everything was dead’: Apocalypse in Jack Kerouac’s Duluoz Legend.” Graduate Conference, State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York, NY. Feb 2004.
“‘Pinned and wriggling on the wall’: Frustration, Aggression, and Masochism in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’” Twentieth Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville. Feb 2003.
“Voices of Their Generations; Narrative Style and the American Dream in Fitzgerald and Kerouac.” Southwest / Texas Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association, Albuquerque, NM. Feb 2002.
Invited Lectures and Presentations
“The Housewife in Post-War American Culture.” Prof. Brad Fox. Drew University, 7 September 2021 (Recorded remote lecture).
“Suburban Narratives and Playboy Escapes”. Class title: “The Tranquilized Fifties.” Profs. Michael Thurston and Vic Katz. Northampton, MA: Smith College, 28 Nov 2018. Honorarium.
“Fallout Shelters in American Consciousness.” Class title: “US in the World.” Prof. Karen Miller. Long Island City, NY: LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, 5 Nov 2018.
“Designing Effective Writing Assignments and Responding to Student Writing.” Co-presented with Prof. Marianna Bonanome. Presentation to Math Faculty at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, 23 Sep 2014. Honorarium.
Teaching
New York City College of Technology (first appointment, 2010). Click here for courses taught and sample syllabi.
[last updated August 2023]
