I am a writing teacher and poet.
Here at ODU I am the faculty advisor for Gesture, our campus literary magazine, and
Raven, our English, writing, and books club. I mostly teach first-year writing courses
(ENG 100, 110, and 111) and am involved on the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity
(JEDI) committee.
As an Expressivist scholar, my research interests primarily center on the intersection
of composition pedagogies and creative writing instructional practices. I am also
interested in reflection, multimodal composition, and currently working on a project
tying the scholarship of Thomas Merton to our own Dominican Pillars. I am a teacher
at heart, so my research often stays in the realm of the classroom.
In my courses, you can expect to approach things creatively: I am interested in voice
and helping students activate prior writing knowledge to meld their perspective with
an "academic" voice. We read literary and pop cultural texts alongside scholarly works.
I have recently taught Hanif Abdurraqib's "They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us"
and am using Chuck Klosterman's "But What If We're Wrong?" in an upcoming semester.
We read, discuss, and workshop, always returning to ourselves, our own voices, and
how – regardless of genre - we can use our voices to wield rhetorical power.
During former lives in Detroit and San Francisco, I have done youth arts education
programs, have been a barista and a chef, and even once ran twenty miles. At home,
I have two miniature dachshunds named Desi & Poppy, and a beautiful son, Benjamin.
In my office, I have a theatrical-sized poster to the 1996 cinema masterpiece Twister
and a library of board and card games.
I am a massive fan of the Crew, casual fan of Oakland A's baseball, food (both eating
and cooking), board, card, and video games, and an occasional pop culture and music
critic. See some of my poetry and other recent work at www.tonydegenaro.com.
