Welcome visitor! My name is Dr. Tiffany Marquise Jones, and I am an Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Oxford College of Emory University in Oxford, GA. As my CV shows, my path has been a winding road. That said, I have always been a lover of language and culture in all of its forms.

After an internship led me back to graduate school for my Masters in Rhetoric and Composition, I discovered one of my greatest joys: teaching novice writers to wield the power of the pen. Through my tenure as an instructor of Composition, I found the need to advocate for linguistic (language) diversity in and outside of the classroom. So, I began focusing on African American Vernacular English, specifically its negative depiction in the media and resulting in-group resistance. This led me to obtain my Masters in Linguistics. However, this work proved to be very disheartening as it focused solely of AAL in relationship to Black trauma. Instead, I decided to redesign my work and showcase the positive impact that AAL VATs have on American culture. This eventually pushed me towards pursuing a PhD in Anthropology.

That said, my Rhetoric and Composition background was not cast aside. In fact, it heavily informed my teaching practices as a Presidential Teaching Fellow for the Social Advocacy and Ethical Life (SAEL) program at UofSC. For three years, I served as the teacher of record for an intense seminar-style course that prompted students’ engagement with ethical theories while establishing their own platforms advocacy. The best part of this class was exposing students of all disciplines to my research interests, including how to dissect any interaction and communicative act (e.g., conversation and performance) based on their socio-cultural, political, and, economic contexts. My experience teaching experience SAEL very much works in tandem with my 7+ years of teaching Rhetoric and Composition, Critical Thinking, and Research. In fact, it serves as the foundation to how I approach teaching Linguistics and Anthropology.

My training at UofSC grounded me in four-field education that has primed to cover an array of topics in Anthropology beyond my interest in Linguistics and Cultural Anthropology. As such, my introduction survey courses highlights issues around race & ethnicity in Biological and Archeology. My students are prepared to discuss bioethics, epigenetics and intragenerational trauma, repatriation and protection of Indigenous and African American artifacts and grave sites, as well as Museum Studies work towards centering minoritized communities’ voices and experiences. That said, I also have developed curricula for upper division courses, including syllabi for Anthropology of Race & Ethnicity, Anthropology of Gender & Sexuality, Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology, as well as special topics course entitled “Language as Social Action”  and “Dispossession and Displacement.”

In terms of research interest, my most recent project documented the interactive model of open mic culture while showcasing how local artists’ performances embody and preserve “Chocolate City” — i.e., a sense of home that is being threatened by gentrification. This work earned the prestigious Minority Dissertation Fellowship Award (2019), which is given to one successful recipient by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) — a honor I’m so proud of. However, I now hope to explore other sites of gentrification, dispossession, and discrimination, especially those that impact African American communities in the Atlanta metro area. My goal is to utilize the very framework from my dissertation research on Chocolate City to document oral histories of Black Atlantans as well as follow the growth of neighborhoods choosing to fuel Black entrepreneurship and ownership in places under threat. Essentially, I am very fortunate, as my work seamlessly blends my personal and professional identities and curiosities.