David Farley, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Writing, Institute for Core Studies
First-Year Writing Program, Institute for Writing Studies
Ph.D. in English, University of Tulsa
farleyd@stjohns.edu
As a teacher, I see my main task as that of getting my students
to see themselves as writers. To do this, they need to see writing
itself as something more than what they do to get on with other
things. I try to convey the seriousness of the discipline, while
either eliciting or cultivating the pleasure that is writing. In
the classroom, one way of achieving this goal in first-year writing
is to get students to recognize what they find interesting or
challenging both in their own lives and in the world around them
and to then convey that to others in a way that resonates. Whether
in the varied subject matter and creative flair of creative
nonfiction, which asks students to go beyond academic discourse, or
in the challenges of engaging various social problems, which
require students to go beyond academic walls, I see writing as
inexorably located at the crossroads between self and the
world.
My current book project is also about intersections between the
self and the world. Modernist Travel Writing, which is currently
being revised for the University of Missouri Press, traces the
connections between traveling and writing, or more accurately it
traces the connections between exterior journeys and interior
reflection, and analyzes the way these are presented to various
audiences. My current research also includes the ways that academic
service-learning can be used in first year writing to get students
to think about their roles as writers and as active citizens.