Victoria (Tori) Hoover

Tori Hoover is a fifth-year dual Ph.D candidate in English and Comparative Media Analysis and Practice (CMAP). Her research and teaching interests include sound studies, 20th and 21st century literature, Black studies, and theories of media and mediation. Her work considers the history of sound media as it influences the world of podcasting. Tori’s dissertation, tentatively titled “White Noise: Sound, Race, and the Podcast Ecosystem,” aims to close-read popular podcasts as inheritors to the legacies of gendered and racialized sound media with particular emphasis on the rise of the phonograph and Golden Age radio production.

Tori was a 2021-22 Mellon Fellow for the Digital Humanities. As part of her fellowship, she completed a research project called “Redlining in Literature,” in which she mapped Black-authored novels of New York City over HOLC housing maps, analyzing the impact of housing segregation on the movement, experience, and psychology of fictional characters.    

In addition to her work with the Center for Digital Humanities, Tori is also the recipient of a HASTAC scholarship for her work on the academic podcast “Art of Interference,” which explores the intersection of art and science in the era of climate change. Tori is the show’s primary editor, as well as a co-writer, -host, and -producer. Outside of Vanderbilt, she is also an intern at Nashville Public Radio, where she produces episodes for the station’s daily show, “This is Nashville.”

During her time at Vanderbilt, Tori has also designed and taught courses on the southern gothic, women in isolation, and literary nonfiction. In 2022, she was nominated for the Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.