Justin Greene, unscripted

Justin Russell Greene is in a reverie of cordyceps fungus-infected zombies. This summer, vines thrive while humanity suffers, and he and his 14-year-old son fight for their lives as they play “The Last of Us” on their PlayStation 5. 

His research doubles as his electronic pastime. Along with expanding a conference paper on “Nope” into a full-length article that explores how point of view and gore function in Jordan Peele’s films, he’s beginning a new project on speculative visual media, including cinema, television/streaming shows, and games that imagine alternate futures, moral crossroads, and apocalyptic consequences. He mixes such topics into his fall “Being Human: Literature and the Human Experience” course and a revision of his spring “Literature and Cinema” course.

Greene is this year's recipient of the Joyce Gentry Smoot Award, which recognizes exceptional teaching by a non-tenure track instructor in the Department of English.

With 16 years of teaching writing, Greene helps first-year students navigate the demands of college level composition. Additionally, he has served as a reader on two graduate student capstones and will be on another this academic year.

Read more about Greene and his teaching strategy.

Why did you decide to go into higher education?

My intention was never to be an academic. Growing up, the only thing I knew was that I was not going to be a farmer like my dad and grandfather. That was not for me. Too much sun, dirt, and grass and as an only child, I think my parents realized very quickly that I was not going to take over the family farm. Sorry, Mom and Dad. But my goal was never to teach. I was just kind of thrown into it, which is the way everything has always ever worked for me, and that’s all right.

How did you go from not farming to teaching in English?

I always wanted to go to a college in a city, and I needed to stay in state to keep costs lower, so I only applied to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. And then when they said I had to choose a major. I knew I liked to write. I was always good at it. I’d won awards in high school for writing, so I decided to be an English major. After I graduated with my Bachelor of Arts, I worked in restaurant kitchens, living that life, and realized I didn’t want to work in a kitchen cooking other people’s food. I love cooking, just not for people who aren’t my family. I knew I needed to do something else.

I decided to apply to grad school and continued in English. At the time I thought, 'Maybe I'll be a teacher. A master’s degree will let me teach at a community college.' And so, I went back to school and focused on 20th-century American literature.

I graduated with my M.A., again from VCU, and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, with my then-girlfriend, now wife, who was already living there. I tried to get a job and struck out on multiple occasions. Luckily, I had some savings, so I wasn't completely mooching off her miniscule public school teacher salary. It wasn’t until September of that year that I received a call from York Technical College in Rock Hill, South Carolina. An adjunct instructor had stopped showing up for their classes, and the English department needed someone to fill in. I ended up stepping in, and this was my first time teaching in a classroom. I had to rebuild everything from the ground up, even gaining the trust of the students, who were really upset they’d been abandoned. I had never taught before, never as a graduate teaching assistant, or anything like that. So, I did that, and I liked it. They offered me a contract to teach in the spring, and I taught the maximum classes that I could as an adjunct. I guess the rest is history, as they say.

What brought you to Virginia Tech?

We moved to Roanoke to be closer to my wife’s family when we started having kids. At that time, I was working at Virginia Western Community College, Ferrum College, and Ram’s Head bookstore. I did that for four years, but all that time I was applying to Ph.D. programs and trying not to get discouraged from rejection letters.

In talking with people at Ferrum, they told me if I viewed myself teaching for the long term, I needed to get a Ph.D. They said it would not be a guarantee for winning the tenure lottery, but it would give me more stability than just the M.A.

I knew that VCU had the interdisciplinary media, art and text program in English, art history, and communications. After a few tries, I was accepted into it, and we moved back to Richmond. My work in the program focused on authorship and celebrity as performative identities across media channels, which required me to build my Ph.D. à la carte from gender studies, literary studies, cultural studies, media studies, and art. Although I had no graduate teaching assistant training but had years of teaching experience, as the instructor of record beginning in my first semester, I taught literature surveys and textual analysis classes. It was a far cry from first-year writing, which had been and still is my primary teaching vocation.

I don't do English stuff in the traditional way, which makes it hard to place my work and me into strict disciplinary confines. I’m more cultural media studies than English proper. But I ended up getting a visiting assistant professor of rhetoric job at Hampden-Sydney College in Farmville, and working there for a year in the rhetoric program, I further developed my skills in writing instruction. When I saw that Virginia Tech was needing to hire instructors, I threw my name in, got the job, moved back to Roanoke, and here I am.

What is your biggest accomplishment as an instructor?

I think my biggest accomplishment is being more open-minded to where my students are coming from. Particularly, at a place like Virginia Tech, students are coming from vastly different backgrounds, some having had poor public schooling, some coming from affluent private schools where they had rigorous college preparatory experience, and some speaking and writing in multiple languages because they are international students. I read, assess, give feedback, and help them get to a point that is better than what they began with based on their own individual aspects. The lessons in the classroom are more standardized, but when I'm reading someone’s weekly draft material or completed project, my focus is on them as an individual trying to communicate something. How can I challenge each person to get what they need out of the class?

What is some advice that you have taken to heart?

Early on, I had this vision of myself being the strict professor with rigorous ideals and views, and then it took a while to rethink that. I always found myself frustrated with the quality of writing and thinking, and it took my wife, who taught middle school and high school mathematics for 15 years, to put teaching into perspective for me. She said, 'You have a master's degree in English, and a Ph.D. in media studies. Your writing is way different, but you’re expecting students to write like you do.'

And you know she was exactly right. It took her putting it into perspective for me to step back and approach students where they are, give them the skills, and not expect them to come out of the class and be the next clean writing academic. I had to think about the expectations that I want for my students.

I teach to the learning outcomes, and I give them those sorts of official things, but the biggest thing I tell my students, particularly in first-year writing, is that I want them to gain confidence - confidence in their own voice, confidence in their own skills. At the beginning of the course, I ask how many believe they are good writers. Only a few may raise their hands, so I tell them there are levels to this. There’s not good and bad because that is extremely subjective. There’s emerging writers and there’s skilled writers, and there are tools to acquire to move from one to the other. My first year writing students probably get so tired of the toolbox metaphor I use, but it’s true and it’s something that extends beyond disciplinary walls. But if they feel confident in knowing they can write a cover letter, construct a series of informative paragraphs, or write a research paper, then I've done my job. If they feel confident that they can do one thing better than they did when they walked into the class, then I've done what I needed to do.