I’m an Assistant Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, CUNY (City University of New York) and Co-Director of OpenLab, the college’s open-source digital platform for teaching, learning, and collaborating. I’m one of the core faculty in our departments new B.S. degree in Professional and Technical Writing, and also teach courses in Literature (science fiction, utopias, dystopias) and first year writing.

I’m also a founding member of the Writing Studies Tree, an online, open-access, interactive academic genealogy for the field of writing studies, and serve on the Steering Committee, the Teaching Committee, and as the web developer for the North American Society for Utopian Studies (utopias/dystopias overlap quite a bit with science fiction, an intersection we’ll be discussing throughout the semester!).

I stumbled upon this cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was delighted to see its name almost mine (close enough!). In Russian, it means “once upon a time” …

I earned my Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY, and my current research interests are in utopian studies, happiness studies/positive psychology, composition and rhetoric, digital humanities, American studies, and the scholarship of teaching and learning (feel free to ask me what any of these areas are!).

I played ice hockey in college (right wing), and have played the violin since I was two years old (and currently play in the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra. I practice yoga pretty regularly, love Thai food (the spicier the better!), kale, & tzatziki, and adore watching old sitcoms from the 70s and 80s (some of my favorites are Maude, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Soap, All in the Family, The Golden Girls (I’m even writing a book chapter on this show!), The Facts of Life, & Family Ties).

I also really enjoy travelling: two summers ago (when that photo above is from) I spent five weeks wandering abroad, in Russia, Finland, Czech Republic, and Switzerland, and this past summer I did a road trip to Michigan and Wisconsin (some of all of these travels were for conferences/work, some for vacation/fun)!

I look forward your reading your Introductions and getting to know you, first virtually and then in person, as the semester progresses