Jeannine Carpenter
jeannine.carpenter@duke.edu

Jeannine Carpenter, matriculated Fall 2004, is researching the dialects of Roanoke Island and assisted in field work in Hyde County and Princeville, North Carolina. She is writing her dissertation. See C.V.

Phillip Carter
phillip.carter@duke.edu

Phillip M. Carter, matriculated Fall 2005, is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to language variation – both humanistic and social scientific.  He is currently investigating the question of agency in language use as well as the use of language in the production of identitarian categories and individual subjectivities.  Phillip’s other research interests include sociolinguistic meta-theory, linguistic epistemology and historiography, social dialectology, general linguistic theory, sociophonetics, Romance linguistics, and Feminist, Poststructuralist, and Queer theories. See C.V.

Sarah Hilliard
shh4@duke.edu

Sarah Hilliard, matriculated Fall 2002, has done research in Roanoke Island, North Carolina and is working on folk dictionaries. Sarah is lives in Brooklyn and is finishing her dissertation. See C.V.

Tyler Kendall
tsk@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~tsk3/

Tyler Kendall, matriculated Fall 2003, is the coordinator of the North Carolina Sociolinguistic Archive and Analysis Project. His dissertation work focuses on sociolinguistic methodology and notions of “data” within sociolinguistics, using the North Carolina Sociolinguistic Archive and Analysis Project - http://ncslaap.lib.ncsu.edu/ - as a testing ground for new, computer-driven approaches to sociolinguistic analysis.  His primary research interests center on understanding variation in spoken language, discourse, and interaction (and what that tells us about linguistic theory) through quantitative discourse analysis, variationist sociolinguistics, and sociophonetics.  He has led the North Carolina Sociolinguistic Archive and Analysis Project since the project’s inception in early 2005.  See C.V.

Ben Torbert, 2004
torbertb@umsl.edu
Assistant Professor, University of Missori, Saint Louis

Dissertation: Southern Vowels and the Social Construction of Salience

Ben Torbert is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.  He is continuing fieldwork this summer in Neshoba, Noxubee, and Bolivar Counties, MS.  He is moderating a panel on region-transitional language varieties at SAMLA, revising some old papers for publication and doing a graduate seminar on Sociolinguistics Spring 2008.  In Fall 2008, he will be teaching in the honors college for the first time, a seminar on AAE.  See C.V.

Jeffrey Reaser, 2006
jlreaser@ncsu.edu
Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University

Dissertation: The Effect of Dialect Awareness on Adolescent Knowledge and Attitudes

Since graduating from Duke in 2006, Jeffrey is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at NC State University. He has been working in the Teacher Education and Linguistics programs at NC State University.  He is the coordinator of the Alternative Licensure program for secondary English.  In 2007, he received a special projects grant award to create a second edition of the "Voices of North Carolina" dialect awareness curriculum for eighth graders (http://ncsu.edu/linguistics/research_dialecteducation.php).  Also in 2007, he (along with Dr. Carl Young) received a grant supporting a 20-month long project that brings together approximately 20 classroom teachers and 7 university professors in a series of professional development workshops and in which the teachers initiate their own research projects related to language, culture, and place.  These projects will be shared at state, regional, and national conferences from the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008. See C.V.