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; Faculty Director, Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, 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. Her research interests include how these dissertation boot camps aid student writers, food writing, and 17th-century French opera.
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.
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. 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).
Brian Ernst teaches Writing 1, 2, 105CD, 105R, 107B, 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, Co-Director of the Professional Writing Minor Business Communication Track, and Faculty Liaison with the SASC Undergraduate Advisor. Dr. Ernst completed his Ph.D. in Modern European History at the end of 2014.
Feminist rhetoric, creative nonfiction, digital media and rhetoric
- South Hall 1516
Daniel Frank teaches multimedia and technical writing in classes such as Writing 1E and 2E, Writing 107T, and Writing 105M. Dan’s research interests include game-based pedagogy, virtual text-spaces, passionate affinity spaces, and connected learning. As a gamer and a performer, 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.
Dr. Michelle Grue’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.
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 areas of specialization include nineteenth-century US Literature, multi-ethnic US literature, 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.
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.
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.
- Associate Professor of Writing; Director of the Writing Program; Affiliate Faculty Member in Education
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.
Paul Mena teaches Journalism and News Writing, Digital Journalism, Multiplatform Journalism, and Writing and Ethics. He received his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Florida. His areas of research are journalism, misinformation, fact-checking, and credibility. His academic work has been published in Journalism, Social Media + Society, Journalism Practice, Policy & Internet, and Media and Communication. He worked as a professional journalist in Ecuador, reporting for BBC News Mundo, El Pais (Spain), and Ecuadorian media. As a Fulbright scholar, he obtained his master's degree in Mass Communications and Journalism Studies at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.
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).
Dr. Robby Nadler is a Lecturer specializing in graduate writing instruction and also serves as the Academic, Professional, and Technical Graduate Writing Development Director for the Graduate Division.
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.
Kathy Patterson (she, her, hers) teaches Approaches to University Writing, Academic Writing, Writing in Community, Writing for the Social Sciences, and Writing for the Humanities, and a first-year Discovery seminar focused on collective memory and what it means to be a Gaucho. She also teaches regularly in the ACE (Academic Communities for Excellence) program. Her research interests include blogging pedagogy, community writing, Disability Studies, and Memory Studies.
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 1E & 2E, Writing 109ST, and Writing 105SW). 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.
Christian Thomas is a 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).
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.
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.