Tahneer Oksman
Photo credit: Amy Farber
Title
Associate Professor of Academic WritingAssociate Professor of Communication and Media Arts
She/her
Department
Writing, Language, and Literature; and Communication and Media ArtsPhone
646-393-4142About
Tahneer Oksman (she/her) is a writer, teacher, and scholar. Her research and teaching interests revolve around: Memoir Studies; Comics & Visual Culture; Literary Journalism; Contemporary Jewish American Literature; Feminist Literature & Theory; and Writing Studies, including Digital and Transmedia Literacies.
Tahneer is Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Language, with a joint appointment in the Department of Communication and Media Arts at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, where she teaches classes in writing, literature and comics, and journalism. She regularly delivers talks for academic and public audiences on her topics of interest.
Her interviews and reviews related to comics, graphic novels, and memoir can be found in publications including NPR, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
She is author of “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (Columbia University Press, 2016), and co-editor of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself (University Press of Mississippi, 2019), winner of the 2020 Comics Studies Society (CSS) Prize for Best Edited Collection. With Laura Limonic, she is co-editor of a multi-disciplinary Special Issue of Shofar: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, titled “What’s Jewish About Death?” (March 2021).
Currently, she is working on a new book exploring memoirs about grief and why we read them. She is also co-editor, with her mentor and friend Nancy K. Miller, of a book of mostly first-person essays, Feminists Reclaim Mentorship: An Anthology (SUNY Press, 2023), a 2023-2024 Jewish Women’s Archive Book Club pick. Tahneer and Nancy are now working together again, this time as co-editors of a special issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly, titled, “Chronic: Living with Chronic Illness.”
For links to some of her writing and upcoming events, see tahneeroksman.com.
Degree(s)
Ph.D., CUNY Graduate Center
M.A., The University of Chicago
B.A., The University of Pennsylvania
Recent Work
Feminists Reclaim Mentorship: An Anthology. Co-edited with Nancy K. Miller (SUNY Press, 2023).
The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself. Co-edited anthology, with Seamus O’Malley (University Press of Mississippi, Critical Approaches to Comics Artists series, 2019).
“How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (Columbia University Press, 2016).
Why Memoir Matters: Learning from the Lives of Others (The Great Courses, 2024).
Research
Recent academic articles and book chapters
“Grief.” In Keywords and Keyimages in Graphic Medicine, edited by Lisa Diedrich and Briana Martino. The Pennsylvania State University Press (forthcoming).
“Interconnected losses: grief made visible in Roz Chast’s Can’t we talk about something more pleasant?” In Matrilineal Dissent: Women Writers and Jewish American Literary History, edited by Bushnell, Harrison-Kahan, and Walters. Wayne State University Press, 2023. 325-354.
“Expressions of Jewishness alongside grief in American graphic novels.” In The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel, edited by Baetens, Frey, and Leroy. Cambridge University Press, 2023. 177-192.
“From surreality to surreality: on Nancy K. Miller’s cancer collages” In Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders, edited by Bauer, Greenbaum, and Lightman. Syracuse University Press, 2023. 26-30.
Teaching
WRIT 009, Introduction to Writing Lab
WRIT 011, Writing Lab
WRIT 101, Writing Seminar 1 (themes: Space, Place, and Identity; Online Identities)
WRIT 102, Writing Seminar 2 (themes: Into the Wild; Writing the Visible; Autobiography and New
York City)
WRIT 201, Advanced Writing (themes: Graphic Storytelling; Writing About Photography)
NYC 102, New York City Seminar (theme: New York’s Literary Women)
COMM 205, Journalism in the 21st Century
COMM 309/JOUR 310, Arts and Media Reporting and Criticism
EWL 234, Women’s Literary Traditions
EWL 307, The Visual Memoir
EWL 348/COMM 348, Digital Journal of Ideas and Culture
EWL 350, Comics as Literature
COMM 350, Journalism Special Topics (themes: Reporting on Work and Life; Reporting on Technology and Social Media)
CRW 346, Intermediate Creative Writing
CRW 391, Special Topics in Creative Writing (theme: Hybrid Memoir)
Professional Experience
National Book Critics Circle, Member (current).
Jewish Women’s Archive, Academic Advisory Board, 2021-current.
Gender Justice Caucus, Association of Jewish Studies, Board of Directors, 2021-2024; 2024-2027.
Paper Brigade (literary journal), invited short story reader. (Spring 2021; Spring 2022; Spring 2023; Spring 2024)
Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Awards Academic Advisory Committee, Brandeis University, 2021-2022; 2022-2023; 2023-2024.
MLA, Global Jewish Forum Executive Committee, Jan. 2019-Jan. 2024. (Chair, Jan. 2022-Jan. 2023)
Office Hours
Thursdays, 1-2PM in Nugent 151, or by appointment (in-person or Zoom)