Dave Tell
- Professor, Communication Studies
- Co-director, Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities
Contact Info
Personal Links
Biography —
Dr. Tell’s research focuses on issues of race, memory and the digital humanities. Since 2014, he has focused on the legacy of the murder of Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta. As a long-time partner with the Emmett Till Memorial Commission of Tallahatchie County, Inc., Dr. Tell’s work has a strong public focus. His scholarship is written for broad, public audiences and he has worked extensively with the ETMC to develop resources (mobile apps, roadside markers) with which to tell the story of Till’s murder for the next generation.
His 2019 book Remembering Emmett Till (University of Chicago Press) tells the complete story of Emmett Till’s commemoration in the Mississippi Delta. Written with the resources of a 2016 NEH Fellowship, the book accounts for long silences and brief, passionate outbursts of memorial investment. It tells the backstories of the signs and museums that now punctuate the land where Till was killed. It reveals a world of controversy, patronage, nepotism and racism lurking just behind the placid surface of polished historical markers. Drawing on untapped archives, 1,000 pages of never-before-seen FOIA documents, reams of grant records, competing maps, and extensive on-site experience, Remembering Emmett Till presents the murder from the perspective of those who live in its shadow and, all too often, survive economically through the desperate repackaging of Till’s story. It tells the sometimes-inspiring, more-often-heartbreaking, always-unlikely backstories of the Delta’s 21st-century investment in Till’s story.
Dr. Tell is a co-director of the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities. Since 2014, Dr. Tell has been the lead investigator on the Emmett Till Memory Project, a collaborative, public and digital humanities project. Using a GPS-enabled smartphone app, the ETMP will take visitors to ten sites related to Till's murder in the Mississippi Delta. At each site, the ETMP will provide historical and contemporary photographs; narrative explanations; digital access to archival documents; social-media check-ins; and GPS directions to the next site. This project is still in development.
In addition to his work on Emmett Till, Dr. Tell continues to publish on the history of rhetoric and, in particular, its intersection with modern architecture.
Dr. Tell is a prolific public speaker. Since 2014, he has given nearly 50 public talks on the legacy of Till murder. He has brought Till’s story to jails, high schools, detention centers, public libraries, town halls, local bookstores and elite universities across the country.
Dr. Tell is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2017 Chancellor’s University Scholarly Achievement Award, the 2012 Ned N. Fleming Distinguished Teaching Award and several awards for engaged scholarship.
Education —
Selected Publications —
Books
Tell, Dave. Remembering Emmett Till (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, May 2019).
Tell, Dave. Confessional Crises and Cultural Politics in Twentieth-Century America (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).
Winner: Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award, 2013. National Communication Association
Digital Humanities Products
Dave Tell, “Surprised by Emmett Till,” [online roleplay designed for high school classroom] Serious SIM. Project funded by an NEH Digital Humanities Implementation grant (Christian Spielvogel, PI). July 2019.
Correa, Pablo, Davis Houck, Christian Spielvogel, and Dave Tell. “Emmett Till Memory Project” Field Trip by Niantic Labs. First published February 4, 2016.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles (selected)
Tell, Dave. “Measurement and Modernity: Height, Gender, and Le Corbusier’s Modulor,” Public Culture 31.1 (January 2019): 21-43. Lead essay.
Tell, Dave. “Can a Gas Station Remember a Murder?” Southern Cultures. Special Issue: “Things.” (Fall 2017), 54-61.
Tell, Dave. “Remembering Emmett Till: Reflections on Race, Geography, and Memory.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 20.2 (2017): 121-38.
Tell, Dave. “The Rise and Fall of a Mechanical Rhetoric, or, What Grain Elevators Teach us About Postmodernism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 100.2 (2014): 163-185.
Public Writing
Tell, Dave. “Emmett Till never feared his killers? No, he died in agony.” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, August 27, 2018.
Tell, Dave. “Till Marker was just 35 days unshot.” Tallahatchie County (MS) Sun Sentinel. August 9, 2018, 5.
Reprinted by Humanities Kansas, August 10, 2018. Till Marker Was Just 35 Days Unshot.
Tell, Dave. “Letter: The Long-Delayed Pursuit of Justice.” The Atlantic Monthly (July 26, 2018)
Tell, Dave and Patrick Weems, “How is Emmett Till Remembered?” History News Network. February 5, 2017.
Tell, Dave. “A Brief Visual History of the Bullet-Riddled Emmett Till Memorial.” Reading the Pictures. November 16, 2016.
W. Ralph Eubanks and Dave Tell, “For Better or Worse, How Mississippi Remembers Emmett Till.” Literary Hub. November 2, 2016.