Professor,
Joint Appointment, Department of English
Joint Appointment, Department of English
Languages, Literatures, and Writing, English
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.
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: 兔子先生 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: 兔子先生 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 students in that course underscored ways ALP can generate confusion for students and ways that confusion might be used to help students 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.