Joseph B. Weisler

B.A in Communication Studies: Florida Atlantic University

M.A. in English: Creative Writing, Southern New Hampshire University

Research Interests: Rhet/Comp, Literacy Studies, Medical Humanities, Trauma Studies, Brain Wellness, Academic Freedom, Linguistic and Identity Vulnerability, Burnout Cultures Teaching Interests: English Composition, rhetoric/rhetorical theory, Humanities and Language of Human Expression, Liberal Studies, Film studies

Courses Taught at SJU: LST1000-LIBERAL STUDIES Joseph Weisler is a first-year English Ph.D. student at St. John’s University. He comes to St. John’s as a third-generation student from the city of Parkland, FL. His research interest and instructional pedagogy focus on the trauma that exists in academic settings, as Joseph and his hometown collectively healed through the Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School mass shooting that occurred in February 2018 that took seventeen lives and injured seventeen more at his alma mater. Joseph utilizes his classroom space as a vehicle for vulnerabilizing language in its rawest form of artistic and human expression while exploring brain wellness through a lens of medical humanities. Attentive to how education and mental health are portrayed on the screen as a binary, Joseph is interested in films such as Dead Poets Society, Freedom Writers, and To Sir With Love in analyzing how the journey of both the student and educator within academia can make a call onto action within a discourse of humanities, and how such stories can translate into vulnerable conversations for both the health and well-being of all stakeholders within the academic system, where an individual can persevere in finding their voice through a burnout culture.

Joseph has taught Introduction to Liberal Studies at St. John’s and will also be instructing Literature in a Global Context. He has (and will continue to) instructed English Composition, an Introduction to the Humanities, as well as Writing for the Media at both St Thomas University and United International College located in Miami, FL, and Miramar, FL, respectively.