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John Tassoni

Education and Background

• Ph.D., Literature and Criticism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
• M.A., American and British Literature after 1800 Villanova University, August 1987
• B.A. Widener University. Area: English (Creative Writing Emphasis). May 1984.

At ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵ, I have served as Director of College Composition, University Director of Liberal Education, Co-Coordinator of the Regionals' Center for Teaching and Learning. My teaching area is primarily first-year writing, especially those courses that provide additional support to Miami's open-access ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵs.

Courses Taught

• BIS 301: Integrative Studies Seminar II
• BIS/EGS 305: Integrative Writing in Global Contexts
• ENG 007/111: “Blended” Composition
• ENG 104/105: Writer’s Studio
• ENG 111: Composition and Rhetoric
• ENG 112 Composition and Literature
• ENG 141: Life and Thought in American Literature
• EGS 460: Masculinity Studies
• ENG 481/581: Writing Center Consulting
• ENG 698: Workshop in the Teaching of Writing I
• ENG 699 Workshop in the Teaching of Writing II
• ENG 731: Theory and Practice of Teaching Composition
• ENG 732: Issues in Basic Writing

Research Interests

• Basic Writing
• Studio Pedagogy
• Faculty Development

Selected Publications

Books

• Composing Other Spaces. Co-Edited with Douglas Reichert-Powell. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2009.
• Blundering for a Change: Errors and Expectations in Critical Pedagogy. Co-Edited with William H. Thelin. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2000.
• Sharing Pedagogies: Students and Teachers Write About Dialogic Practices. Co-Edited with Gail Tayko. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997.

Editorships of Academic Journals

• Founding Co-Editor, Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning. 2009 to Present.
• Founding Co-Editor, Open Words: Access and English Studies. 2006 to 2016.
• Co-Editor, JTASS: Journal of Teaching Academic Survival Skills. November 2002 to July 2003.

Articles in Scholarly Journals

• “That Place That Is a Teaching and Learning Center.” International Journal for Academic Development, vol. 0, no. 0, 2023.. DOI:
• “Post-Arrival Mentorships That Are Not Mentorships: Cross-Gender and Cross-Generational Trajectories in Rhet/Comp’s Nexus of Practice.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 74, no. 1, 2022, pp. 55-83.
• “Mike Rose in This Hallway.” WPA: Writing Program Administration, vol. 45, no. 2, 2022, pp. 23-25.
• “Eavesdropping Is Communicating: A Center for Teaching and Learning Learns as It Listens.” Journal of Faculty Development, vol. 36, no. 2, 2022, pp. 62-64.
• “Mainstreaming Creativity: Creative Writing Enters General Education’s Advanced Writing Requirement.” Journal of Creative Writing Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2020, Article 1:
• “Faculty Training in the Cross-Section: What Teacher Studios Can Tell Us About First-Year Seminars. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, vol. 30, no. 1, 2019, pp. 77-99.
• “Deep Shit: A Dialogue About Rhetoric, Pedagogy, and the Working Class.” (Co-Authored with Sara Webb-Sunderhaus and Richard Lee Walts.) Open Words: Access and English Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2007, pp. 24-47.
• “(Re)Membering Basic Writing at a Public Ivy: History for Institutional Redesign.” Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 25, no.1, 2006, pp. 96-124.
• “The Student Literary Magazine on a Two-Year Campus: Where Politics of Place Meet Politics of Literary Representation.” (Co-Authored with Eric Melbye.) Pedagogy, vol. 6, no. 2, 2006, pp. 289-308.
• “Blundering Border Talk: An English Faculty Member Discusses the Writing Center at His Two-Year Campus.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College, vol. 33, no. 3, 2006, pp. 264-278.
• “Retelling Basic Writing at a Regional Campus: Iconic Discourse and Selective Function Meet Social Class.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College, vol. 33, no..2, 2005, pp. 171-184.
• “Not Just Anywhere, Anywhen: Mapping Change Through Studio Work.” (Co-Authored with Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson.) Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 24, no. 1, 2005, pp. 68-92.
• “Editing Dialogics: Ethical Issues Concerning Student Contributors in Edited Collections.” (Co-Authored with Gail Tayko). Writing on the Edge, vol. 13, no. 2, 2003, pp. 83-101.
• “Surviving Academic Survival: A True Story about Representation, Pedagogy, and the Personal.” JTASS: Journal of Teaching Academic Survival Skills. No. 3, 2001, pp. 47-56.
• “Rhetoric and the Writer’s Profile: Problematizing Directed Self-Placement.” (Co-Authored with Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jeff Sommers). Assessing Writing, vol. 7, 2000, pp.165-183.
• "Should I Write About My Grandparents or America?: Writing Center Tutors, Secrets, and Democratic Change." Journal of Teaching Writing, vol. 15, no. 2, 1998, pp. 195-209.
• "The Liberatory Composition Teacher's Obligation to Writing Centers at Two-Year Colleges." Teaching English in the Two-Year College, vol. 25, no.1, 1998, pp. 34-43.
• "Deep Response: An Ecofeminist, Dialogical Approach to Introductory Literature Classrooms." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 3, no. 1, 1996, pp. 131-154.
• "Lying with Sea-gull: The Ecofeminist Dialogics of Beauty in Robinson Jeffers's 'Inhumanist.'" ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 2, no. 2, 1996, pp. 45-63.
• "Redburn's Kunstlerroman: Nineteenth-Century Linguistics and Melville's Signification of Delusion." Nineteenth Century Studies, vol. 6, 1992, pp. 51-60.
• "Play and Co-option in Kenneth Koch's Ko, or a Season on Earth: 'Freedom and the Realizable World!'" Sagetrieb, vol. 10, 1992, pp. 123-32.

Chapters in Edited Collections

• “A Post-Arrival Mentorship That’s Not a Mentorship: Mediated Discourse Theory and an Ecological Approach to Learning over Time and Place” (co-authored with Aurora Matzke). Accepted by editors for the proposed anthology Mentorship and Methodology: Reflections, Praxis, and Futures. (Forthcoming from Utah University Press.)
• “Basic Writing’s Interoffice, Intercampus Actor-Network: Assembling Our History Through Dolmagean Analysis.” Accepted by editors for the proposed anthology Network Theories, Social Justice, and Supersystems in Writing Program Administration. (Forthcoming from WAC Clearinghouse.)
• “Heterotopic Vistas.” (Co-Authored with Douglas Reichert Powell.) Composing Other Spaces. Co-Edited with Douglas Reichert-Powell. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2009, pp. 1-9.
• “Forty-minute Drive to the Main Campus: Teaching for and from Rhetoric and Composition's Invisible Borderlands." Culture Shock and the Practice of Profession: Training the Next Wave in Rhetoric and Composition. Eds. Susan Romano and Virginia Anderson. Hampton, 2005, pp. 101-119.
• “Blundering the Hero Narrative: The Critical Teacher in Classroom Representations.” Blundering for a Change: Errors and Expectations in Critical Pedagogy. Eds. John Paul Tassoni and William H. Thelin and John Paul Tassoni. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2000, pp. 1-7.
• "Deep Response: An Ecofeminist, Dialogical Approach to Introductory Literature Classrooms." Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. Eds. Patrick D. Murphy and Greta Gaard. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1998, pp. 204-23.
• "A Course in Crisis: Deconcising College Composition and Creative Writing." Teaching Writing Creatively. Ed. David Starkey. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1998, pp. 15-28.
• "Why Share: Students in Pedagogy Scholarship." (Co-Authored with Gail Tayko). Sharing Pedagogies: Students and Teachers Write About Dialogic Practices. Eds. Gail Tayko and John Paul Tassoni. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997, pp. 1-12.
• "'I can step out of myself a little': Feminine Virtue and Female Friendship in Hannah Foster's Coquette." Communication and Women's Friendships: Parallels and Intersections in Literature and Life. Eds. Janet Doubler Ward and JoAnna Stephens Mink. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993, pp. 97-111.
• "'I'm not a poor slave': Student-Generated Curricula and Race Relations." (Co-Authored with Gail Tayko). Social Issues in the English Classroom. Eds. C. Mark Hurlbert and Samuel Totten. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1992, pp. 258-66.

Work in Progress

• "Recalibrating Confusion: Reflections on My Hybrid ALP’s Deictic Center": This is a reflective narrative on an Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) course I developed in response to the COVID pandemic. My experiences with ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵs in that course underscored ways ALP can generate confusion for ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵs and ways that confusion might be used to help ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵs better negotiate a space for their interests and concerns in college classes and ways for teachers to identify elements of their curricula that might unwittingly work against those efforts.