Woman (me) reading from the chapbook, Meditations On Leaving—A Poetic & Photographic Exploration of Place, Body, Gender and Justice (Illinois State University, 2017)

Teaching drives my research. Drawing on a range of fields—first-year writing pedagogy, writing program administration, social justice pedagogy, rhetorical listening and rhetorical empathy, rhetorical genre studies, intersectionality, trauma theory, and the rhetoric of health and medicine—I utilize research to help create a culture of belonging in first-year composition. 

Current Projects

I’m on a New Directions Fellowship through the Mellon Foundation for 2024-2025, working on research related to resilience pedagogy!

“Resilience: A Rhetorical Tool.” Article under review.

“Joy: A Compass Through Failure.” Chapter in Progress. Joy-Centered Pedagogy: Uplifting Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Forthcoming from Routledge.

Selected Publications

“Negotiating Dominance in Writing Program Administration.” Systems Shift: Creating and Navigating Change in Rhetoric and Composition Administration. Edited by Genesea Carter and Aurora Matzke. WAC Clearinghouse (2023): 189-202.

“Actionable Empathy Through Rhetorical Listening: A Possible Future for First-Year Composition.” Co-authored with Allison Tharp. College Composition and Communication 74.4 (June 2023).

“Sharing Lessons Learned: From Antiracist Programming to Antiracist Conferences.” Co-authored with Amanda Solomon Amorao and Jonathan Kim. Writers: Craft and Context 3.1 (November 2022): 13-23.

“Pathologizing the Wounded?: Interrogating PTSD in An Era of Gun Violence.”Rhetoric of Health and Medicine 3.1 (March 2020): 1-33.

“The SRPR Interview: On Elizabeth Hatmaker.” Spoon River Poetry Review 44.2 (Summer 2019): 55-67.

“Methodology & Accountability: Tracking Our Movements As Feminist Pedagogues.” Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis. Edited by Kristine Blair and Lee Nickoson. WAC Clearinghouse (2018): 57-74.

Review of The Hunting Ground. Women’s Studies in Communication 20.3 (July 2017): 19.

Meditations on Leaving. Press 254/Word Bombing Chapbook Series. Illinois State University Publications Unit (Spring 2017). (Copies available for purchase through Press 254.)

“Trauma Theory As Activist Pedagogy: Engaging Students As Reader-Witnesses of Colonial Trauma in Once Were Warriors.”  Special Section on Pedagogy, Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature 28.1 (June 2014): 5-17.

“Playing Well With Others: Demystifying the Workshop Process.”Grassroots Writing Research Journal 2.2 (Spring 2012): 35-43.