Hi, I’m Joel. I’m an academic and writer. The stuff I write about tends to be related to human meaning-making endeavours. The things that interest me the most in this regard are music, language, religion, and love.
Here’s a picture of me standing in front of a Vampire Weekend poster in my office, which is meant to suggest that I am or used to be cool.
I am a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University; I mostly teach subjects related to writing, language, and applied linguistics in education. My research is mostly about writing in higher education. I’m the author of four short books (who has time for long ones?). The most recent is TL:DR: A Very Brief Guide to Reading & Writing in University (On Campus Books/UBC Press, 2023). Buy it for the graduating high school student in your life! There’s also Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll (Cascade Books, 2010) a memoir of 90’s Christian rock fandom, Dancing about Architecture is a Reasonable Thing to Do (Cascade Books, 2022), a a book about music criticism, meaning, and mystery, and, with my colleague Jiang Dong, Perspectives on Teaching English at Colleges and Universities in China (TESOL Press, 2015).
I’m a former editor of the academic journal Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie and president of the Canadian Association for Studies in Discourse and Writing (2022-2024). I also coach little league baseball and play the drums, but not at the same time. I live in Vancouver, BC with my wife Sarah and our two sons. You can find my email address here.