Tara Roeder
Assistant Professor of Writing, Institute for Core Studies
First-Year Writing Program, Institute for Writing Studies
roedert@stjohns.edu
Ph.D. Candidate in English, Graduate Center of the City University
of New York
I’ve been teaching at the Institute
for Writing Studies here at St. John’s since 2006. Before
that, I worked at Queens College and LaGuardia Community
College. In the courses I teach, I ask the writers in my
class to read, write, and meta-write across a variety of genres,
from memoir to investigative research essay to documentary to
poetry to graphic novel. I am one of the founders of the
First Year Writing Program’s Coming to Writing Conference
and the Comp and Coffee lecture series, and have
participated in University initiatives such as the Freshman
Passport Program and the St. John’s University Career and
Leadership Academy, a partnership with the Department of Homeless
Services in NYC.
My research interests include non-oedipal
psychoanalytic theory and pedagogy; feminist theory and pedagogy;
trauma theory; and 20th and 20th century French and American
women’s memoir. I received my M.A. in English here at St.
John’s, and I’m currently completing my dissertation, entitled
Provisional Fictions: Discontinuous Selves and the Making of
Meaning, at the CUNY Graduate Center, where I was a Provost’s
Fellow. In my dissertation, I develop a psychoanalytic
reading model based on the flexible, dialogic therapeutic approach
of Freud’s former student Sandor Ferenczi on order to approach
trauma-based writing by 20th and 21st century women authors.
I also explore the pedagogical implications such empathetic,
non-linear reading practices might have for composition teachers
encountering trauma-based student texts. I am also
currently working on an edited collection with Dr. Roseanne Gatto
entitled
Critical Expressivist Theory and Practice in the
College Composition Classroom. I have published essays on
the politics of composition handbooks; the rhetoric of the female
sublime; and the role of mourning in the work of Marcel
Proust. I have also regularly presented at local and national
conferences such as the
Conference on College Composition and
Communication; the
SUNY Conference on Writing; and the
Trauma and Learning in Post-Secondary Education
Conference.