Welcome, Reader!

Thank you for stopping by! Welcome to my website. Here, you will find a compilation of my professional research, writing, and experiences. Through this portfolio, I will share intersectional, multimodal projects that pull from my interest in literary studies, passion for pedagogy, and commitment to the power of storytelling research. Accompanying each project in my portfolio, I include a metacognitive reflection, contextualizing each project and situating it within my academic and professional journey as an english composition professor, literary scholar, and creative writer. 

This portfolio includes several of my ongoing projects, ranging from a creative nonfiction family biography to a rhetorical review of silence and its pedagogical implications in the classroom. My research themes include pedagogical reflection, critique of my writer's/teacher's positionality, and identity intersectionality. I also have a strong dedication to linguistic justice, accessibility, cultural representation, and multimodality, which you can read more about in my teaching philosophy. Many of these projects were initiated during my research teaching composition and taking graduate courses at Central Washington University. But, as a curious lifelong learner, these projects are merely works in progress, and I am always seeking conversation, feedback, and more theory. So please, contact me with any inquiries about my research!

As a writer and researcher, I have found that my projects often have coinciding themes, even when I am writing for different purposes, classes, and discourses. In fact, it is the intersections of these projects that reveal the most interesting findings. For example, in my project titled "First-Year Composition & Creative Writing: A Transferable Pedagogical Approach to Teaching Ekphrasis," I highlight the intersection between an advanced course in ekphrastic poetry and a course on First-Year Composition pedagogy and history. Although the two courses were fulfilling graduate requirements in different "fields" I couldn't help but overlay the concepts, revealing a really cool moment of transfer. While encouraged on my local level by my professors and mentors, I could still feel the deeply embedded resistance in academia to non-traditional forms. But, the greatest discoveries have blossomed from the intersections of my studies, proving that composition, literature, and creative writing are best learned "together all at once" (Bishop 1993). 

When students enter English 101, they are weighed down by an abundance of writing "rules" and misconceptions, primarily concerning "correctness." Often, the fear of being wrong, looking stupid, or not knowing the answer leads to silence in the classroom, stunting curiosity. My Writing About Writing (Wardle & Downs 2014) inspired ENG 101 curriculum aims to liberate students from these misconceptions by asserting writing truths in the form of threshold concepts. I strive to show students that writing is fun, writing is creative, writing skills are transferable and practical, and "being a good writer" is not about being perfect and correct; it is about rhetorically knowing when and where to break rules and blur lines. 

If you would like to know more about the research and theory informing my work, please make sure to stop by my conference bibliography. I am a full believer that all meaningful writing exists within a discourse community and I am so grateful for the scholars who make this research possible, inspiring me every step of the way! I also want to thank Dr. Dan Martin, Dr. Chris Schedler, Professor Katharine Whitcomb, Dr. Ali Unal, Dr. Eliatamby-O'Brien, Professor Maya Jewell Zeller, Dr. Rodrigo Renteria-Valencia and Dr. Josh Welsh at Central Washington University for supporting and encouraging my research.  

Again, thank you, reader, for taking the time to hear what I have to share. 

Please feel free to reach out to me!

Mariah Sebastiani

M.A. Literary Studies with Teaching Specialization

sebastianimariah@gmail.com