My research lives at the intersection of writing, teaching, and learning. I am curious about the many factors, including a range of pedagogical experiences and practical, emotional, psychological and material resources and barriers, that shape how writers grow and develop over time. My first book, Reframing the Relational: A Pedagogical Ethic for Cross-Curricular Literacy Work (NCTE 2017), examines how writing specialists and faculty in other disciplines communicate in face-to-face conversations about teaching writing. Theorizing pedagogy as an epistemic, reflexive, relational activity among teacher-learners, I argue that a pedagogical approach to cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration can cultivate more productive, sustainable writing initiatives.
You can read more about Reframing the Relational in my post for the NCTE Literacy Blog: http://www2.ncte.org/blog/2017/11/lets-talk-teaching-writing/
Click here to listen to my interview with Studies in Writing and Rhetoric representative, Alex Hanson: https://soundcloud.com/swrbookseries/alex-hanson-interviews-sandra-tarabochia-author-of-reframing-the-relational
My co-edited collection Diverse Approaches to Teaching, Learning, and Writing Across the Curriculum: IWAC at 25 documents a key moment in the history of WAC, foregrounding connection and diversity as keys to the sustainability of the WAC movement in the face of new and long-standing challenges. Boldly engaging such pressing topics as translingualism, anti-racism, emotional labor, and learning analytics, the 18 chapters collected here testify to WAC's durability, persistence, and resilience in an ever-changing educational landscape. Click here to read “Mentorship, Emotional Labor, and Equity for Doctoral Student and Faculty Writers,” my co-authored chapter in the collection.
You can read more about my philosophy and experience of mentorship in my chapter "Slow mentorship: A feminist methodology of becoming holistic scholars," in the collection Mentorship and Methodology: Reflections, Praxis and Futures, co-authored with Lesley Bartlett and Jessica Rivera-Mueller.
I am co-founder and co-editor of the open-access, interdisciplinary journal Writers: Craft & Context, the inaugural issue of which was published in August 2020. We publish a wide array of material focused on writers: the work they do, the contexts in which they compose and circulate their work, how they are impacted by policies and pedagogies (broadly conceived) and how they develop across the lifespan. We invite contributions from a range of academic fields as well as from community experts outside academia. In a departure from traditional academic journals, WCC Journal serves as a venue for writers “to speak with (rather than for and over) others’ communities” (“Open Letter,” 2018). We are committed to a vision of “equitable representation in our scholarship and in our field at large” and, as editors, we take seriously our responsibility “to create the conditions to make it happen” (Blewitt et al., 2019, p. 274).
I am currently at work on a second monograph, tentatively titled Research is the Poetry: Poetic Inquiry for Writing Studies Researchers, which is rooted in my ongoing longitudinal qualitative study of faculty writers. Since 2016, I have annually interviewed 20 faculty writers from 8 universities, multiple institutional positions and various disciplinary fields about writing for publication, pursuing tenure and promotion, negotiating personal and professional relationships, establishing writing practices and identities, navigating institutional systems and structures, and related topics. Recent and forthcoming publications related to this research include:
Tarabochia, S.L. (2024). Becoming researcher-poets: Poetic inquiry as method/ology for writing (through the lifespan) research. In R. Dippre, & T. Phillips (Eds.), Improvisations: Methods and Methodologies in Lifespan Writing Research. WAC Clearinghouse/Colorado State University Press.
Tarabochia, S. L. (2021). From resilience to resistance: Repurposing faculty writers’ survival strategies. Peitho, 23(3).
Tarabochia, S.L. Becoming researcher-poets: Poetic inquiry as method/ology for writing (through the lifespan) research. In R. Dippre, & T. Phillips (Eds.), Improvisations: Methods and Methodologies in Lifespan Writing Research. [Forthcoming with WAC Clearinghouse/Colorado State University Press.]
Madden, S. & Tarabochia, S.L. (2021). Untangling methodological commitments in writing research: Using collaborative secondary data analysis to maximize interpretive potentials of qualitative data. Written Communication, 38(3), 447-476.
Tarabochia, S. L. (2020). Self-Authorship and faculty writers’ trajectories of becoming. Composition Studies, 48(1), 16-33.
Madden, S. & Tarabochia S. L. (2020). Mentorship, emotional labor, and equity for doctoral student and faculty writers. In L.E. Bartlett, S. L. Tarabochia, A. R. Olinger, & M. Marshall (Eds.), Making connections: WAC and the search for common ground. Fort Collins, Colorado: The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado.
Tarabochia & Heddy, B. (2019). Extending the ‘warming trend’ to writing transfer research: Investigating transformative experiences with writing concepts. Composition Forum, 41.
Tarabochia, S. L. & Madden, S. (2018). Writing in transition: Researching the development of graduate student and faculty writers. Writing & Pedagogy, special issue: Writing Development Across the Lifespan, Charles Bazerman, ed. 10(3), 423-452. DOI 10.1558/wap.34576
Writer development; writing pedagogy; writing research methods/methodologies; poetic inquiry; feminist rhetoric and research methods; writing through the lifespan; longitudinal writing research; inclusive publishing.
Writing track; feminist rhetoric; rhetoric and sexuality; rhetoric and the body; nature and environmental writing; working with writers; Difference in writing, rhetoric, and pedagogy; research methods
Senior English major Hailey Grippen earned the Office of Undergraduate Research Spotlight (2018) for her research on faculty writer identity supported by an OUR Mentored Research Fellowship.
Reframing the Relational: A Pedagogical Ethic for Cross-Curricular Literacy Work (NCTE 2017)
Diverse Approaches to Teaching, Learning, and Writing Across the Curriculum: IWAC at 25 (WAC Clearinghouse/University Press of Colorado, 2020)
