The Academic and Professional Writing Program welcomes four new colleagues at the start of the 2016-17 academic year:
Steph Ceraso
A former lecturer at Georgetown University (2013-14) and assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2014-16), Ceraso has published scholarship in College English, Composition Studies, Currents in Electronic Literacy, and other journals. Her 2014 article on sonic pedagogy, “(Re)Educating the Senses,” won the 2015 Richard Ohmann Award, a national award recognizing her refereed article in College English for making a significant contribution to the field of English studies. Ceraso is working on her first book, which proposes an expansive approach to teaching with sound in the writing classroom.
She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Pittsburgh (2013), an M.A. in English literature from the University of Vermont (2006) and her B.A. in English literature from Washington & Jefferson College, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude (2004).
She is planning to develop innovative new composition courses that focus on digital production. Her research and teaching interests include multimodal composition, sound studies, pedagogy, digital rhetoric, disability studies, sensory rhetorics, gender and women's studies, music and pop culture.
This fall, Ceraso is teaching "Writing with Sound," a class in which students will create an original, three-episode podcast series.
John T. Casteen, IV
A poet and essayist whose work addresses culture, visual experience, ethics, and history, John T. Casteen is the author of two books of poems, Free Union and For the Mountain Laurel, both from the University of Georgia Press’ VQR Poetry Series. His recent work includes “The Imaginary City,” an interdisciplinary project in essay, poems, and photographs from China, and “Memory: Viajar,” an essay-film in progress from Peru.
His poems have appeared in Fence, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines, and have been anthologized in Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Jefferson, Best American Poetry, and The Rumpus Poetry Anthology. In addition, he has contributed to Slate.com, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, The Morning News, and VQR. Nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize, Casteen has been awarded the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges’ Mednick Fellowship, New York University’s Visiting Artist Faculty in Residence, and a Faculty Fellowship Residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
Casteen holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia (A&S ‘93) and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has taught previously at James Madison University, on Semester at Sea, and at Sweet Briar College, where he founded a national conference for undergraduate students of creative writing. This fall, he will teach the courses “Writing About Culture and Society” and “Communicating with the Public.”
Cory Shaman
Cory Shaman’s research, teaching, and publications focus on the material histories and representations of environmental injustice, often in the context of post-natural conceptions of the environment. His work takes specific form in examining the growing archive of film and literature related to Hurricane Katrina, and much of his most recent scholarship has explored the ethics of food systems in the American South from a critical vegan perspective.
Shaman’s specific interest in how non-human interests are excluded or obscured in decision-making processes arises from a desire to imagine legitimately just and sustainable arrangements that more fully and seriously account for the lives that historically have been most discounted.
Shaman earned his Ph.D. in English, with concentrations in environmental and regional U.S. literature, from the University of Mississippi (2007).
At the University of Virginia, Shaman will teach introductory courses on critical inquiry, within the Academic and Professional Writing Program, along with associated upper-level undergraduate writing intensive classes.
Kate Stephenson
An alumna who received both of her graduate degrees from the University of Virginia, Kate Stephenson returns to UVA to teach in the Department of English’s Writing Program. Her academic research focuses primarily on composition and pedagogy, but she has also published articles and presented papers on Sylvia Plath, modern poetry, children’s literature, and online education.
Before joining the Writing Program, Stephenson was an editor for the Core Knowledge Foundation (2014-15) and a lecturer in the Composition and Humanities Departments of Kaplan University (2003-2016). In 2012, Kaplan’s College of General Education presented her its Outstanding Faculty Award. She also worked as a lecturer in the English Department of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas (2002-03).
She worked one term as a lecturer in UVA’s Department of English after completing her Ph.D. in English literature (2001). She also completed her M.A. in English literature at UVA (1997) and graduated Summa Cum Laude, with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Duke University, where she completed her B.A. in English literature and German language and literature.
This fall, Stephenson will teach "Writing and Critical Inquiry: Writing about Photography" and "Travel Writing." She is currently designing an advanced writing course that focuses on community engagement and literacy, and in the spring, she looks forward to leading a one-credit pilot course exploring the relationship between writing, community engagement, and leadership.
