James Shepard is a teaching assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Originally from Utah, he received his PhD in English, with a concentration in rhetoric, writing, and linguistics from UT. His research focuses primarily on discourse analysis, stance, and computer-mediated communication. His current work looks at the effects of polysemy on stance-taking strategies in online discourse surrounding veganism. Recently, he was a member of the Digital Black Grief interdisciplinary research group, funded by a National Science Foundation grant, in which computer scientists, social work researchers, and linguists examined online expressions of grief from the Black community and how large language models identify, interpret, and reproduce African American language. He has presented his work at various conferences, most recently at the 2025 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) and the 51st New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV). Outside of academics, he enjoys spending time making music, playing video games with his wife, and cuddling his two adorable dogs, Simon and Ruby.