Tony M. Vinci, Ph.D.

托尼·m·芬奇生活在流行文化和文学史的十字路口。 He teaches classes on HBO’s Game of Thrones and Holocaust literature, fantasy in young adult literature and literary modernisms, androids in film and African American literature. 他的学术研究和他的课程一样多样化，包括发表关于鬼魂、动物和威廉·福克纳文学中的非裔美国人身份的文章； 菲利普·迪克科幻小说中的创伤； 以及当代电影人如乔斯·韦登和吉列尔莫·德尔·托罗所探索的伦理冲突。

What ties his teaching and scholarship together is his interest in ethics, trauma, and the emerging field of the posthumanities. The goal of his scholarship is to reorient Literary and Cultural Studies towards what he terms the radical ethics of the posthumanities — a way of rethinking the history of human expression and cultural production from a wholly non-anthropocentric point of view. Such a reconceptualization compels scholars, teachers, and students of the Humanities to be dissatisfied with quests for meaning and aesthetic understanding; rather, it asks us to be attentive to the cultural work literary, cinematic, and cultural texts perform, how they challenge our most basic assumptions about human identity, social exchange, and even the construction of what we call “world.”

While this work is heavily theoretical (a designation that is often considered “unfriendly” for students), in the classroom, it has translated into powerful and inspiring intellectual possibilities for both high-parameter students as well as those who struggle with academic unpreparedness. By offering students new ways to think about the study of English, broadly conceived, Vinci’s scholarship helps students to enliven their relationship to the discipline.

At the core of his teaching is the belief that students ought to demonstrate a way of thinking, a way of being, by participating in non-linear, multivalent procedures that demonstrate a deep, abiding curiosity. While guided, their pursuits should ultimately be self-directed. Beyond learning the known and accepted, their curiosity should inspire them to develop something novel, something innovative, something of lasting import — both to themselves and to their communities.