Based on years of teaching, program administration, and advocacy work in women’s shelters, I’ve seen writing allow people to bear witness to trauma and cultivate resilience. My research asks: How does this happen? For me, research and teaching are intertwined practices for creating a culture of belonging in first-year composition.
Current Research
Currently, my research is supported by a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2024–2026), which is funding my training in psychology and neuroscience so I can build an interdisciplinary theory of resilience in writing studies. This fellowship is catalyzing a long-term research trajectory at the intersections of writing, learning, and the brain.
As part of this work, I am writing my first book, Writing is Resilience: Fostering Agency and Transformation in First-Year Composition, which argues that first-year composition can cultivate resilience by teaching writing as an exercise in agency and transformation. Drawing from my research in rhetorical theory, composition pedagogy, and the cognitive sciences, alongside my work as a teacher and writing program administrator, my book offers a framework for resilience-centered instruction at classroom, programmatic, and institutional levels.
Research Foundations
My research grows from a longstanding inquiry into how writing shapes the ways we navigate adversity, a question that first emerged in my work on trauma, feminist pedagogy, and writing instruction. Over time, this inquiry has deepened through explorations of how joy can guide us through failure, how empathy and care can be hard to sustain even among educators committed to equity, and how we owe accountability—not only to our students, but to ourselves. Across these projects, I’ve remained guided by listening—to students, colleagues, texts, and our cultural moment—and by a commitment to humanizing writing instruction.
Selected Publications
These selected publications reflect key themes in my ongoing research. A full list of my publications is available upon request.
“Resilience: A Rhetorical Tool.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. Forthcoming in Issue 25.3 (2025).
“Joy: A Compass Through Failure.” Chapter in Joy-Centered Pedagogy: Uplifting Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, edited by Eileen Kogl Camfield. Routledge (2025): pp. 212–225.
“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): pp. 731–757.
“Negotiating Dominance in Writing Program Administration.” Chapter in Systems Shift: Creating and Navigating Change in Rhetoric and Composition Administration, edited by Genesea Carter and Aurora Matzke. WAC Clearinghouse (2023): pp. 189–202.
“Pathologizing the Wounded? Interrogating PTSD in an Era of Gun Violence.” Rhetoric of Health and Medicine 3.1 (March 2020): pp. 1–33.
“Methodology & Accountability: Tracking Our Movements as Feminist Pedagogues.” Chapter in Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis, edited by Kristine Blair and Lee Nickoson. WAC Clearinghouse (2018): pp. 57–74.