Since my arrival at Daemen in Fall 2008, I’ve been teaching basic, introductory, and advanced composition. I also serve as the Writing Coordinator, assisting students and faculty with composition placement, scheduling, and course planning. Before coming to Daemen, I was an Assistant Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. At UST, I taught a range of courses in rhetoric, composition, disciplinary history, and women’s literature for graduate and undergraduate students. Prior to my appointment at St. Thomas, I served as the Graduate Coordinator of Comp 101 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I specialized in Rhetoric and Composition Studies and received my PhD in 2003.
I developed my interest in the study, teaching, and craft of writing early in my educational development, when I was fortunate to enroll in rhetoric and composition course work as an undergraduate student at Nazareth College. While I was always a voracious reader, studying the connections between writing, language, and learning gave me a different way to think about texts – and a new way of understanding how writing works in the world. After one of my professors took me to my first conference for Rhetoric and Composition scholars during my senior year in college, I was hooked. And for nearly 15 years, I’ve had the good fortune to teach writing, to help others to work with student writers, and, from time to time, to do a bit of writing myself.
My scholarly research interests include disciplinary history and the influence of technology on disciplinary practices. Two recent articles – “Making Knowledge, Shaping History: Critical Consciousness and the Historical Impulse in Composition Studies” and “Not Just One Shot: Extending the Dialogue about Information Literacy in Composition Classes” (co-authored with Margaret Artman and Robert Monge) have been accepted for publication, and I am currently working on two additional projects related to information literacy and the development of Writing Studies.
In my spare time, I enjoy cooking, live music, and travel. Though I reveled in my time living outside of the region (and in at least two other Rust Belt cities), I’m a Buffalo native who is happy to be living back home. Since returning to Western New York, I’ve been taking full advantage of the many things I missed during my absence: a full schedule of Sabres hockey; cheap, plentiful, and authentic Italian cooking; and Buffalo’s lovely architecture, neighborhood businesses, and waterfront. In the year ahead, I’m hoping for my first snow day in several years, and I plan to grow at least one viable tomato plant.