Employee Directory

Rebekah Delaney

• English Faculty
• Email
• Dyker Heights
• Upper School

“Toni Morrison once said, “Word-work is sublime…because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference—the way in which we are like no other life.” Rebekah Delaney says, “I hope to evoke a desire and appreciation of such word-work in my students.”

Rebekah initially encountered Poly Prep in 2008 while working as a substitute teacher. Poly served as the perfect place to inspire thought and the completion of her dissertation in 2010. Much to her surprise, a position opened in the English Department just after her defense. She was pleased to find that she was able to make use of her undergraduate work in literature and women’s studies from SUNY Oneonta, her master’s in cultural studies from Claremont Graduate University, as well as her second master’s and Ph.D. in performance studies from New York University. Rebekah’s experience teaching in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at SUNY Oneonta and in the Expository Writing Program at New York University served her well as she sought to inspire her students to understand literature as something beyond stale words that simply lingered on the page. She knows that it is essential that students begin to understand words as something to investigate, encounter, and learn to wield as a means of self-expression. She hopes that each year she provides a space that allows her students to begin to discover the role language plays in their everyday lives.”