About Me

 

I've centered my career on teaching people how to read and write as intellectuals. From 1999-2009, I was the founding director of the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University—an independent, multidisciplinary program recognized for its innovative approach to teaching writing as a form of critical inquiry. Now I'm an associate professor in the English department at Duke—where I teach courses in academic writing, creative nonfiction, critical reading, writing and social class, images of teaching in fiction and film, and writing pedagogies.

Most of my writing grows out of my work as a teacher. In Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts, I offer students a set of moves for making generous and assertive use of the texts they read in their own work as writers. In A Teaching Subject, I trace the recent history of teaching writing in American colleges. And in Media Journal, I offer students some ways of thinking about the role of popular culture in their everyday lives. I'm now at work on a book on how the teaching of writing is depicted in movies and novels.

I grew up in Philadelphia, in a working-class, Irish-Catholic home, went to parochial schools there, and then attended Haverford College and New York University. Before coming to Duke, I directed the composition program at the University of Pittsburgh. My wife, Pat, is a non-profit administrator; my daughter, Kate, teaches high school history; and my daughter, Mora, studies voice and acting. We live with two big and happy mutts, Sunny and Rocky, in an old house in Durham. I like running, tennis, and chess, watching minor league baseball, and talking with friends about movies, books, music, and politics.