Please note: For questions about add codes or courses, please contact the Writing Program Advisor, Audrey Youngblood (ayoungblood@hfa.ucsb.edu).
People
Associate Vice Chancellor of Teaching and Learning; Professor of Writing Studies
Katie Baillargeon teaches a range of academic writing courses, from lower-division Writing 1, 2, ACE, and 50, to upper-division 105s and 109s like Writing in the Humanities, Writing in the Social Sciences, and Rhetoric. She also teaches 107L—Legal Writing—in the professional writing series. Each summer, she runs UCSB's Dissertation Write-in for graduate students across the campus and she has recently expanded into faculty writing consultations and workshops. Her research interests are varied, and include graduate student writing, how dissertation boot camps aid student writers, food writing, and 17th-century French opera.
Eva Braunstein teaches Approaches to University Writing (Writing 1), Academic Writing (Writing 2), and Rhetoric and Writing (Writing 105R), among others. She completed her PhD in Religious Studies in 2021.
Kara Mae Brown teaches Writing 2 and Writing for Public Discourse (105PD), as well as a number of writing courses in the College of Creative Studies. Her research interests include assessment, online writing instruction, and multimodal composition. She also writes and publishes short stories and essays.
- Lecturer
Rebecca Chenoweth teaches Writing 1, 2, 50, 105SW, and 109HP. She is also a founding editor of Synthesis, the Writing Program's Upper-Division publication of excellent student work.
Ljiljana Coklin teaches a variety of writing classes: Writing 50 (Academic Research), 109F (Film), 107G (Global Studies), 107B (Business Writing), and 109HU (Humanities). Her teaching and research interests focus on issues of migrations, border crossings, gender and citizenship in a contemporary global society and culture. She is also interested in the role of communication in international conflicts and its potential in peace initiatives. She is an avid reader of contemporary fiction.
Craig Cotich teaches Grammar and Stylistics, Professional Editing, Writing for the Teaching Professions, Business Writing, as well as a range of academic writing courses. Specializing in two areas within the UCSB Writing Program, he directs the Professional Editing track of the minor and chairs the ACE program.
Christene d’Anca teaches Writing 2, 105C, and 109HU. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature with an emphasis in Medieval Studies. Her interdisciplinary research interests include women and storytelling, alternate power structures, and female patronage of the funerary arts. Her articles have been published in the Journal of European Studies, Early Middle English, The Romanian American Journal for the Humanities, Romanische Forschungen, Journal of Animal Ethics, and EuropeNow, with chapters in various edited collections.
Chris Dean teaches Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing in Community (105CW), Rhetoric and Writing (105R), Multimedia Writing (105M), and Writing for the Teaching Professions (109ED).
Jim Donelan holds multiple appointments between the Writing Program, Department of English, and the College of Creative Studies - Writing & Literature Department, teaching a variety of composition and literary courses accross the curriculum at UCSB.
Brian Ernst teaches Writing 1, 2, 105CD, 105R, 107B, 107WC, 109HU, and 157B. His research interests include rhetorical code studies and narrative design in interactive media. He is also an editor for Starting Lines, a contributor to the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative, a member of the Collaborative Writing Placement Program, a mentor in the Raab Writing Fellows Program, junior Co-Director of the Professional Writing Minor Business Communication Track, and Faculty Liaison with the SASC Undergraduate Advisor. Further, he recently joined the Writing Spaces team as an Associate Editor for the Activities & Assignments Archive in Fall 2023. Dr. Ernst completed his Ph.D. in Modern European History at the end of 2014.
Feminist rhetoric, creative nonfiction, digital media and rhetoric
Daniel Frank teaches First Year Composition, multimedia, and technical writing. Dan’s research interests include AI Art and Writing technologies, game-based pedagogy, virtual text-spaces, passionate affinity spaces, and connected learning. Dan is continually interested in helping students find their own passion as they learn to create, play, and communicate research, argumentation, and writing, across genres, networks, and digital communities.
Peter teaches Writing 2 and 105WE: Writing and Ethics. His teaching and research explores the politics of inequality and modern/postmodern literature. He is interested in the ways that political ideologies, cultural or institutional practices, and public policies underwrite or alleviate social and economic inequalities. In particular, he is interested in democratic theories and neoliberal forms of governance and subjectivity, as well as how they are represented in late 20th and 21st century film, literature, and journalism.
Baron Haber is new to the UCSB Writing Program and teaches Writing 1 and Writing 2 this year. His research interests include global Anglophone literature, environmental writing and ecocriticism, and science communication for the public. His scholarship on the environmental gothic has appeared in darkmatter and in ARIEL (forthcoming).
Leslie Hammer teaches Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing for Cultural Rhetorics (105CR), Writing for Chicanx Studies (109CS), Writing for the Humanities (109HU), Writing for the Social Sciences (109SS), and the ACE sequence. She received her Ph.D. in Literature from UC San Diego. Her research interests include nineteenth-century US Literature, multiethnic US literature, Native Hawaiian texts, US women's writing, transnational literature, and autobiography studies. She is the Chair of the Academic Communities of Excellence (ACE) Program and Writing 1 Committee.
Jeff Hanson teaches Writing for Public Speaking (105PS), Professional Writing for Global Careers (107G), and Business and Administrative Writing (107B), as well as graduate courses in the English for Multilingual Speakers Program / Linguistics.
Deborah Harris is Associate Director and Continuing Lecturer in the Writing Program, and teaches a wide variety of classes (lower-division, upper-division, and graduate levels) ranging from science writing to writing in the humanities. Her book, Media and the Rhetoric of Body Perfection: Cosmetic Surgery, Weight Loss, and Beauty in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2014) explores the transformation imperatives advertised by the media, especially in the West. Her research interests include medical rhetoric, body rhetoric, popular culture, and composition.
Sarah Hirsch teaches Writing 1, 2, 107J, 107M, 109HU, and 109V. She received her Ph.D. in English from UC Santa Barbara with an emphasis on American literature and maritime culture. Her current research interests are visual rhetoric and New Orleans, as she is working on the visual representation of the "X Code." The "X" was spray painted on the homes and buildings by Urban Search and Rescue teams in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Sarah's reserach focuses on the intepretation of these images and the reinterpretation and repurposing of them by New Orleans' residents. She is also working on visual, material and embodied rhetorics of the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans.
Victoria’s research and teaching are animated by her investments in building just, equitable, and communal frameworks for embodied life through the practice of writing. Her research interests center on cultural and feminist rhetorics with specific attention to gender, sexuality, reproductive justice, and trauma.
Peter Huk teaches a variety of writing classes, primarily the engineering writing sequence, Writing for Global Careers, Writing for Film, and Writing for the Humanities. His pedagogy and research interests include contemplative inquiry and reflection in the writing classroom and representation in documentary film.
Jennifer Johnson teaches Approaches to University Writing (Writing 1) and Academic Writing (Writing 2), as well as Rhetoric and Writing (105R), Writing for the Social Sciences (109SS), Writing for Accounting (107A), and Academic Writing: Theory and Practice (501). She holds a Ph.D. in Composition and TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her current research interests include the training and preparation of composition teachers, genre theory, disciplinarity, and the relationship between composition and literary studies.
Paul M. Rogers is an Associate Professor of Writing Studies in the UCSB Writing Program and a proud alumni of UCSB's Gevirtz Graduate School of Education where he completed his PhD in 2008. He is the former Director of the Northern Virginia Writing Project, a co-founder and former chair of the International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research, and the co-editor of eight collections, including “International Models of Changemaker Education” (2022), "Toward a Re-Emergence of James Moffett's Mindful, Spiritual, and Student-Centered Pedagogy" (2023), and “Writing as a Human Activity" (2023). He is a recipient of the K. Patricia Cross Award for leadership in higher education and a co-recipient of the Janet Emig Award for research in English education. He teaches courses in academic and business writing, qualitative research methods, professional and technical communication, and social entrepreneurship.
Robert Krut teaches Writing 1-2 (through the ACE Program), 105C, 107B, 109F, and works extensively with community outreach. In addition to his work in the Writing Program, he teaches creative writing and literature in the College of Creative Studies. He is the author of four books: Watch Me Trick Ghosts (Codhill/SUNY Press, 2021), The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (Codhill/SUNY Press, 2019), which received the Codhill Poetry Award, This is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books, 2013) recipient of the Melissa Gregory Lanitis Poetry Prize, and The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox Books, 2009). His poetry has also appeared in numerous literary journals, both in print and online.
Karen Lunsford teaches Science Writing for the Public (105SW), Writing for the Health Professions (109HP), Writing for Science and Technology (109ST), Academic Research Writing (251), Teaching Technical Communication (252), the Proseminar for the Writing Studies Emphasis (502A/B), and Literacy in the Information Age (Education 202F).
Patrick McHugh teaches Writing 50 (Work in the 21st Century), and a number of 100-level courses including Business Writing and Creative Nonfiction.
Nomi Morris teaches Journalism and News Writing (107J), Magazine Writing for Publication (107M) and Advanced Beat Reporting (152A). She serves as director of the Journalism track in UC Santa Barbara’s Professional Writing Minor. Morris came to UCSB with a background in international journalism, as well as covering the arts and religion, and writing narrative nonfiction, essay, and commentary. Her work has been published in TIME, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Ascent and other media outlets and literary journals. She has been a foreign correspondent in Europe and the Middle East and holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Nonfiction).
Ellen O'Connell Whittet is a lecturer who primarily teaches journalism, creative writing, writing for the humanities and arts, and community writing. Her own writing has been published in The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, New York Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and her book, What You Become in Flight, was published by Melville House in 2020.
Aili Pettersson Peeker teaches Writing 2 and Science Writing for the Public. She holds a PhD in English with an emphasis in Cognitive Science from UCSB. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and focus on bringing together cognitive neuroscience, literary studies, writing, and pedagogy. She is currently the Research Coordinator for the UCSB Trauma-Informed Pedagogy project.
Dr. Michelle Petty’s interdisciplinary research in Education and Writing draws on Black feminism to investigate diversity issues in academia, creative writing, and in digital writing. She teaches writing courses in the Writing Program and in the Writing and Literature Major of the College of Creative Studies.
Amy Propen teaches courses in rhetoric and professional writing, including Writing About Sustainability, Multimedia Writing, and Technical Writing. Her research interests focus on visual-material and environmental rhetorics, posthumanism, animal studies, and rhetoric as advocacy. Her recent book, Visualizing Posthuman Conservation in the Age of the Anthropocene, was published with The Ohio State University Press in 2018. Her new book, At Home in the Anthropocene, is a follow-up to Visualizing Posthuman Conservation and was published in 2022 with The Ohio State UP.
- Lecturer
Kevin Rutherford teaches a variety of courses, including Writing 1E, 2, 2E, 50, 50E, 105C, 105CD, 105M, 105R, 107B, and 109F.
Bob Samuels teaches Writing for Public Discourse (105PD), Writing for the Social Sciences (109SS), Writing for the Teaching Professions (109ED), and Rhetoric and Writing (105R).
Beth teaches Approaches to University Writing (Writ 1), Academic Writing (Writ 2), Writing for the Teaching Professions (109ED), Rhetoric and Writing (105R), and Writing for the Humanities (109HU). She also teaches Theory and Practice of Writing Center Consultation (160) for those who are interested in tutoring writing. She has a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric from Miami University, and her research interests are focused on affect theory, pedagogy, and teacher development.
A graduate of UCSB’s PhD Program in Comparative Literature, John joined the Writing Program after defending his dissertation, Sonic Alterities, with distinction in August of 2022. John completed doctoral emphases in Writing Studies and Translation Studies and currently teaches Writing 2 and Writing 105. His Writing Studies capstone examined sound and the rhetoric of classroom space from antiquity to the virtual. An avid interdisciplinarian, John has also taught and designed courses in nuero-humanities, sound studies and African American music and literature.
Kenny Smith is co-chair of the Writing Placement Committee along with Madeleine Sorapure and Sarah Hirsch. He also teaches introductory composition (Writing 1 & 2), writing and the philosophy of language (Writing 105P), and scientific communication courses (Writing 109ST, Writing 105SW, and Writing 159A). His research focuses on how literacy skills transfer from the classroom to the outside world, particularly in regard to the interpretation of scientific texts and journalism. When not playing video games and reading all the things, he has been known to listen to a considerable amount of music, especially if it has synthesizers and a catchy beat.
Madeleine Sorapure teaches Multimedia Writing, Document Design and Production, Digital Portfolio, and Digital Storytelling. She is co-director of the Multimedia Communication track of the Professional Writing Minor and author of articles on the rhetoric of data visualization, multimodal composing and pedagogy published in Kairos, Computers and Composition, Big Data & Society, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and elsewhere. She is also an associate dean in the Division of Undergraduate Education.
Amanda Stansell teaches Writing 2LK with Sociology, 109ED, 109CS, and the E sequence. She is also co-director of the Science Communication Track with the Professional Writing Minor.
Christian Thomas is a continuing lecturer in the Writing Program and the Associate Director of the Center for Digital Games Research. He teaches Rome: The Game (WRIT/ARTHI W6R), How Games Tell Stories (INT 36GS), Writing about Film (WRIT 109F), Multimedia Writing (WRIT 105M), Writing for Public Speaking (WRIT 105PS), Writing and the Research Process (WRIT 50), and Academic Writing (WRIT 2).
Lauren Vallicella teaches Writing 1, Writing 2, and Writing for the Humanities (109HU). A graduate of UCSB, Lauren participated in the doctoral emphasis in Writing Studies while completing her PhD in Theater and Dance. Her research interests include intersections between literature and dance in the early twentieth century, affect and empathy in the classroom, and choreography (writing with the body) as rhetoric.
Vickie Vértiz's writing is featured in the New York Times magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, KCET Departures, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many others. Her book Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut won the 2018 PEN America literary prize in poetry. Vértiz teaches creative nonfiction, writing for Chicanx Studies. Her research interests include drag culture, feminist and queer art, film, and performance, experimental writing, and writing for community engagement. She earned an M.F.A. from UC-Riverside in nonfiction, a Master’s degree in public affairs from UT-Austin, and a B.A. in political science from Williams College.
Nicole Warwick teaches Writing 1, 2, 105R, and 109ED. She also serves as a TA Supervisor in the Writing Program. Her research treats graduate student experiences in TA preparation programs with additional interests that include narrative study, alternative rhetorics, and minor transnational theory.
Martha Webber teaches Writing 1, 2, 105PD, 107B, and 107WC for the program. She has a PhD in English with a specialization in Writing Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (and even an AA in Fashion Design). Her research on nonprofit organizations and literacy sponsorship has been published in Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric. Her creative writing, including short humor, has appeared in journals including Slackjaw, Paper Darts, and Bending Genres.
Alison Williams primarily teaches media communications, including 107P, 105C, 107M, 107DJ, and 107V, as well as Writing 2. Alison comes to UCSB with a career in public relations and marketing for entertainment and advertising, and she holds an MFA Creative Writing and MA English from Chapman University. Her own writing has been published in literary, scholarly, and mainstream publications.
Kali Yamboliev teaches a range of academic writing courses, including lower-division courses like Writing 1, Writing 2, and Writing 50 and upper-division courses in the 105 and 107 series, including Writing for Business, Writing for Public Relations, Magazine Writing for Publication, and Science Writing for the Public. She has also worked in translation, editing, and publishing for the past ten years, and is currently a co-editor for Starting Lines, the Writing Program’s anthology of student writing. Her research interests center on the rhetorical strategies politicians, the media, and the public use to create ideas of ethnic and national belonging, with a focus on anti-immigrant rhetoric in Italy, both historical and contemporary.