Directors

 

Bill Corbett

William Corbett

Director, Student Writing Activities, 14N-316 617-253-4454 wcorbett@mit.edu

William Corbett edits the small press Pressed Wafer specializing in poetry broadsides, chapbooks, and books.  He runs the literary program at CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit gallery in New York City's Chelsea.

Subjects:

  • 21W.731 - Writing and Experience
  • 21W.756 - Writing and Reading Poems

Publications

Publications

Books:

  • Poems on Occasion (Pressed Wafter, 2008)
  • Opening Day (Hanging Loose, 2008)
  • The Letters of James Schuyler to Frank O'Hara (Turtle Point Press, 2005)
  • Just The Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler (Turtle Point Press, 2004)
  • All Prose: Selected Essays and Reviews (Zoland Books, 2001)
  • Boston Vermont (Zoland Books, 1999)
  • John Raimondi Sculptor (Hudson Hills, 1999)
  • New York Literary Lights (Graywolf Press, 1998)
  • Furthering My Education (Zoland Books, 1997)
  • New & Selected Poems (Zoland Books, 1995)
  • Philip Guston's Late Work (Zoland Books, 1994)
  • Literary New England (Faber & Faber, 1993)
  • Don't Think: Look (Zoland Books, 1991)
  • On Blue Note (Zoland Books, 1989
  • Remembrances (The Figures Press, 1987
  • Collected Poems: City Nature (National Poetry Foundation, 1984)
  • Runaway Pond (Applewood Press, 1981)
  • Schedule Rhapsody (Pig Press, 1980)
  • Spoken in Sleep (United Artists, 1979)
  • St. Patrick's Day (Aikron's Dolphin, 1976)
  • Columbus Square Journal (Angel Hair, 1975)
  • Three New Poets (Pym-Randall, 1966)

Pamphlets:

  • Various by different presses

Anthologies:

  • Included in various publications

         

Links:

Rebecca Blevins Faery

Rebecca Blevins Faery

Director, First Year Writing, 14N-332 617-253-3062 faery@mit.edu

Rebecca Blevins Faery holds the Ph.D. in American literature from the University of Iowa. She is a teacher, student, and critic of American literary and cultural history with special interests in race, feminist criticism and theory, and the essay as a literary form. She taught writing and literature at Hollins College, the University of Iowa, Mount Holyoke College, and Harvard University before coming to MIT.  She is Director of First Year Writing in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies.  Her essays, poems, and scholarship have been published in many literary journals and books.  Dr. Faery's essays have three times earned honorable mention in The Best American Essays. Her most recent book is Cartographies of Desire: Captivity, Race, and Sex in the Shaping of an American Nation. She is currently at work on a collection of personal essays on the Vietnam war. 

 

Subjects:

  • 21W.730 - Writing on Contemporary Issues
  • 21W.731 - Writing and Experience
  • 21W.742 - Writing about Race
  • 21W.735 - Writing and Reading the Essay
  • 21W.745 - Advanced Essay Workshop

Publications

Publications

Books:

  • Cartographies of Desire: Captivity, Race, and Sex in the Shaping of an American Nation -  a study of how narratives of captive women—white women captured by Indians, Native women by colonizers—have been used to racialize the population of North America and to forge a particular identity of the nation.
  • In Depth: Essayists for Our Time - an anthology with Carl Klaus and Chris Anderson

Other:

  • Published poems, essays, and literary scholarship in periodicals such as Kalliope, Artemis, The Iowa Review, San Jose Studies, Vietnam Generation, Legacy, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and The MIT Faculty Newsletter, and in a number of books, including Courses for Change in Writing; Teaching Writing: Pedagogy, Gender, and Equity; The Fourth Genre: Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction; Edith Wharton: New Critical Essays; Homemaking: Women Writers and the Politics and Poetics of Home; and What Do I Know? Reading, Writing, and Teaching the Essay.

Links:

Suzanne Lane

Associate Director, Writing Across the Curriculum, 12-118 617-452-5009 stlane@mit.edu

Suzanne Lane, ‘85 is Associate Director of Writing Across the Curriculum in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, and directs the Writing Advisor program in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Dr. Lane has taught Writing at Harvard University, and American and African American Literature at Boston University and California State University, San Bernardino. Dr. Lane’s research focuses on rhetorical and narrative theory, as well as on student writing development. As a researcher on the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing, Dr. Lane investigated how students learn the rhetorical cultures and conventions of different disciplines across the curriculum. In her current book project, Dr. Lane analyzes the rhetoric of slave narratives, academic histories, and historical novels of slavery. Parts of this work have been published in African American Review.

Subjects:

  • 21W.730 - Writing on Contemporary Issues

Publications

Publications

  • “Conjuring,” The Feminist Encyclopedia of African-American Literature, Ed. Elizabeth Beaulieu. New York: Greenwood Press, 2005
  • “Reading Early Slave Narratives as Oral Narratives,” Narrative Society Conference, April 2004
  • “Black Thunder’s Call for a Conjure Response to American Negro Slavery,” African-American Review. Volume 37, Number 4, December 2003. 583-598

Links: 

 

Neal Lerner

Neal Lerner

Director of Training, Writing Across the Curriculum, 14N-229C 617-452-2939 nlerner@mit.edu

Neal Lerner, Ed.D., is Director of Training in Communication Instruction for the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. He teaches scientific and technical writing and supports lecturers and graduate students who teach in communications-intensive classes. His current research is a history and contemporary classroom study of teaching high-school English in Holyoke, MA.  Dr. Lerner has been a consultant or an invited speaker on writing program and faculty development with more than 20 colleges and universities.

Subjects:

  • 21W.732 - Introduction to Technical Communication

Publications

Publications

Books:

  •  The Idea of a Writing Laboratory - to be published in 2009 by Southern Illinois University Press
  •  Writing and Speaking as a Scientist and Engineer: Perspectives from MIT - co-author (with Mya Poe and Jennifer Craig), will be published by MIT Press
  • The Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring, 2nd ed - co-author (with Paula Gillespie)

Other:

  • Published more than 25 peer reviewed articles and book chapters
  • Consultant or an invited speaker on writing program and faculty development with more than 20 colleges and universities

Links:

Les Perelman

Les Perelman

Director, Writing Across the Curriculum, 12-119 617-253-3375 perelman@mit.edu

Les Perelman is Director of Writing Across the Curriculum in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also served as an Associate Dean in the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Education. He was Principal Investigator for the development of the iMOAT Online Assessment Tool and currently serves as Chair of the Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Writing, a non-profit corporation that oversees the use and ongoing development of the iMOAT Online Essay Evaluation Service by member colleges and universities. Dr. Perelman has been a consultant on writing and the assessment of writing for colleges and universities, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, and for the Modern Language Association.  Recently, Dr. Perelman has become a well-known critic of the Writing Section of the new SAT and other mass-market standardized writing tests.

Subjects:

  • 21W.747 - Rhetoric

Publications

Publications

  • Primary author of the first web-based technical writing handbook, The Mayfield Guide to Technical and Scientific Writing
  • Published articles on technical communication, computers and writing, the history of rhetoric, sociolinguistic theory, and medieval literature

Links:

 

Mya Poe

Director, Technical Communication, 14N-229B 617-253-7893 myapoe@mit.edu

Mya Poe, Ph.D.,is Director of Technical Communication at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MT she works with science and engineering faculty to integrate writing and speaking instruction in their courses and develops assessment approaches for the Writing Across the Curriculum program. She teaches Rhetoric of Science and team-teaches courses in Quantitative Physiology, Biomedical Engineering Design, and Frontiers in Biomedical Engineering. In some of her recent research, Dr. Poe has looked at how scientists use visual evidence in making scientific claims; the changing demands of contemporary scientific writing; and racial stereotypes in writing assessments. She has published her work in journals such as College Composition and Communication, IEEE Professional Transactions as well as has contributed to a number of book collections. Her co-authored book Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering: Case Studies From MIT is forthcoming on MIT Press. She is currently working on an edited collection entitled Race and Racism in Writing Assessment. In 2007 she won the School of Humanities and Social Sciences Infinite Mile Award for Continued Outstanding Service and Innovative Teaching.

Subjects:

  • 21W.747 - Rhetoric

Publications

Publications

  • Poe, M., Lerner, N. & Craig, J. (forthcoming 2010). Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering: Case Studies from MIT. MIT Press.
  • Poe, M. (forthcoming). Field notes from a composition adjunct at the biomedical engineering outpost. In D. LeCourt, A. Goodburn, & C. Leverenz (Eds.). Rewriting Success: Constructing Careers and Institutional Change in Rhetoric and Composition.
  • Poe, M. (2009). Reporting race and ethnicity in international assessments. In C. Schreiner (Ed.) Handbook of Research on Assessment Technologies, Methods, and Applications in Higher Education. (pp. 368-385). Hershey, PA: IGI Global Books.
  • Poe, M. & Opperman, J. (2009). Scientific writing and technological change: Teaching the new story of scientific inquiry. In A. Herrington, K. Hogdson, & C. Moran (Eds.) The New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment. (pp. 143-163). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
  • Poe, M. & Garfinkel, S. (2009). Security and privacy in the wireless composition classroom. In A. C. Kimme Hea (Ed.) Going Wireless: A Critical Exploration of Wireless & Mobile Technologies for Composition Teachers and Scholars. (pp. 179-195). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
  • Poe, M. (2008). Genre, testing systems, and the constructed realities of student achievement, College Composition and Communication, 60(1), 141-152.
  • Craig, J, & Lerner, N., & Poe, M. (2008) Three case studies in teaching science and engineering communication across the curriculum, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 51(3), 280-301. Article was top five finalist (out of 224 submissions) for the 2009 McGraw-Hill – Magna Publications Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning Award. Article re-printed for the Teaching Professor Conference.
  • Poe, M. (2007). Writing beyond disciplinary discourse: Power and politics in the teaching of scientific writing. In A. Elshimi & N. Kassabgy (Eds.) Sustaining excellence in ‘communicating across the curriculum’: Cross-institutional experiences and best practices. (pp. 24-36). London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Poe, M. (2007). Uptake and racial stereotypes in writing assessments. 4 Simposio Internaticional De Estudies de Generos Textuas, (4th International Symposium on Genre Studies). (pp. 237-252).
  • Poe, M. & Lewitt, S. (2006). The four myths of writing: Changing science and engineering students’ preconceptions about writing and science, The International Journal of Learning, 12(8), 57-62.
  • Poe, M. (2004). Race and American educational testing: Using socially situated research to understand student performance on large scale literacy tests, The International Journal of Learning, 11, 7-15.
  • Poe, M. & Freeman, D. (2004). Integrating technical writing into a large lecture course. Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Retrieved October 10, 2004, from www.vanth.org/docs/Freeman%20and%20Poe%202004.pdf
  • Poe, M. (2000). On writing instruction and a short game of chess: Connecting multiple ways of knowing and the writing process, Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, 4(1), 30-44.

Links:

 

Steve Strang

Steve Strang

Director, Writing and Communication Center, 12-120 617-253-4459 smstrang@mit.edu

Dr. Steven Strang has served as Fiction Editor for the magazine Just Pulp and was the Publisher and Editor of the literary journal The Pale Fire Review. He reviews manuscripts for several publishers and journals. He is a communication and writing consultant for various universities, businesses and companies.

Subjects:

  • 21W.747 - Rhetoric

Publications

Publications

  • Writing Exploratory Essays (Mayfield 1995 and Freeload 2008)
  •   “Staffing a Writing Center with Professional Tutors” in The Writing Center Directors Resource Book (2007)
  • Fiction and poems published in such journals as The Beacon Review, Footwork, The Cathartic, Poetry Today, Muse's Brew Poetry Review, Mystery Time, Poets, Nexus, and Nit and Wit
  • Published literary criticism and pedagogical articles in such journals as College Composition Communication, Issues in Writing, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and Cithara

Links: