Narrative

As an educational researcher in literacy studies, I am primarily interested in creating rich and full descriptions of the ways different literacies function in the every day lives and experiences of students from diverse backgrounds. Currently I am interested in the shift between secondary and post-secondary education with a particular sensitivity to discursive models concerning the nature of “university education” as seen through the lens of eco-critical ethnography. In essence, the ins and outs of schooling and literacy instruction do not happen “nowhere” and are intimately connected to the geographic spaces they inhabit. The seeds of my current scholarship were sown during my time as an undergraduate student. It was while reading Marx, Foucault and later Emerson, Whitman, and Ginsberg that I began to take seriously questions concerning race, gender, class and their relationship to academia as well as education in whole. It was only a matter of time before the work of John Dewey and his notions of democracy, education, culture, experience, and growth became the foundation for my scholarly pursuits. After receiving a Master of Fine Arts in 2007, I immediately turned my full attention to questions concerning the role literacy education has in cultural reproduction as well as transformation. While my current work uses the university first year writing classroom as the pivot point for much of my inquiry, I am ultimately interested and perplexed by the entire range of education, from early childhood to adult education.