Jumpstart your summer writing goals in this one-week workshop, with a focus on developing and planning your own writing and research project. Co-led by writing teachers and scholars Diana Epelbaum and Tahneer Oksman, we will explore academic writing, from the nuts and bolts of writing, revision, organization, and editing, to reflective conversations about writing-related anxiety, including finding support systems, examining motivations and roadblocks, and developing effective feedback practices. Together, we will discuss healthy approaches to productivity culture. Using our expertise with developmental editing, writing across the curriculum, and holistic project framing, we will provide individual feedback to each participant while pointing to the many ways instructors can bring some of these same techniques to their own classes across the disciplines. By the end of the week, participants will walk away with a summer research and writing plan, as well as a repertoire of individualized tools to help follow it through.
Professors from all disciplines working on any kind of writing project—including articles, book chapters, research proposals, and hybrid or digital projects, among others—and from all career stages are encouraged to apply. Participants should come with a project they would like to develop and a one-to-two paragraph description of that project and its timeline. Ideally, instructors will bring projects that are in their early stages, though we will also accept those further along.
Faculty will:
Develop the organization, scope, and timeline for a current scholarly project.
Develop a repertoire of individualized tools to help follow through on the project.
Receive and use effective peer and convener feedback towards their own writing goals.
Reflect on their own writing methodologies and practices, evaluating their effectiveness.
Reflect on transferring their own writing methodologies and practices to the classroom.
Contextualize writing anxiety, productivity culture, and personal barriers to writing.
Participate in a community of writers, researchers, and teacher-scholars.
ABOUT THE CONVENER(S)
Diana Epelbaum, PhD (she/her) is Associate Professor and Director of the Academic Writing Program at Marymount Manhattan College. Her scholarship is interdisciplinary, bridging writing and rhetoric, early American literature, and the history of science. She is a reading specialist and educator trained in a balanced literacy approach who has spent her career in deep engagement with writing, reading, and thinking pedagogies. A recipient of The New York Times “Teachers Who Make a Difference Award,” Diana now teaches interdisciplinary history of science, literature, and FYC in the Writing about Writing model and trains faculty in classroom metacognition.
Tahneer Oksman, PhD (she/her) is Associate Professor and former Director of the Academic Writing Program at Marymount Manhattan College, where she teaches classes in writing, literature and visual culture, and journalism. Prior to MMC, she was co-coordinator of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program at Brooklyn College, and she has facilitated many writing workshops over the years. Tahneer is author of “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs, and co-editor of Feminists Reclaim Mentorship: An Anthology. She regularly publishes essays about books and literature for a variety of publications, including The Washington Post and NPR.com.