I received my PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University in 2017, where I worked for 12 years. Before becoming a doctoral student, I directed their Writing Center, earned a masters in English from the University of Nevada-Reno, and taught high school English at a small school in Western New York. I am currently an associate professor of Writing Arts at Rowan University.
As a researcher, I’m interested in public, multimodal, and extracurricular writing, mostly from self-identified amateurs who make use of the tools and resources at hand to publish and circulate their own writing. For this reason, my dissertation examined shifts in DIY print culture since the popularization of the web and explained how these shifts affect the teaching of writing — both in the classroom and out. I drew from a range of affective and new materialist methods to explore this history, conceiving of both writing publics and individual authors as assemblages of becoming. The data for this project came from Toronto’s Broken Pencil magazine, where I am also a contributor. I’ve since extended this kind of periodical research to The Factsheet Five Archive Project. To find out what else I’ve been up to, please visit my research page.
As a teacher, I’m not only influenced by DIY culture, but my experiences leading and consulting in writing centers. Moreover, I believe post-process approaches provide rich perspectives on the complex decision-making of authors as they attempt to participate in the meaning-making processes that are so often shifting. Please see my teaching page for more information on courses I’ve taught, and my public humanities to see the kinds of workshops I’ve designed in New York and New Jersey.
In addition to my research and teaching, I enjoy running, biking, camping, cooking, and crate-digging.