My name is Vyshali Manivannan, known to my classes as Prof. Mani (pronounced like money), and I am an educator who has taught primarily at the undergraduate level for over ten years. I currently teach Writing Studies in the Department of English and Modern Language Studies at Pace University’s Pleasantville campus. I have also taught in afterschool and summer programs aimed at grades 9-12 and precollege programs for incoming freshmen from under-resourced areas. It was in one of these precollege programs that a student live-tweeted my classes with the titular #manivannanism hashtag; அறிவுடையார் எல்லாமுடையார் (arivudaiyar ellamudaiyar) is a Tamil proverb meaning that those with knowledge have everything. I myself learned this attitude from my Appa, a physics professor, who always inspired me to think, record, reflect, and do better. He went by Dr. Mani, and I’ve adopted his teaching nickname as my own.
My areas of pedagogical expertise include Composition and Rhetoric and Journalism and Media Studies. In those fields, I have taught introductory courses on writing; literary analysis; research writing; the graphic novel; digital composing; media ethics; fake news and disinformation; geek, hacker, and troll subcultures; consumer media culture; and survey courses on histories of electronic and digital media.
My work focuses on multimodal rhetoric, embodiment, affect theory, the gamified classroom, open access and accessibility, and feminist, antiracist pedagogies.
This space serves as a digital repository for my teaching, research, and service philosophies; course websites, both active and archived; portfolio of courses taught; sample assignments and “best practices“; and post-class reflections on successful lesson plans, academic labor practices, non-Western perspectives and decolonial pedagogy, and so on.
My CV, research projects, creative work, personal blog, and abridged teaching portfolio can be found at my personal site.