I am a doctoral candidate in Composition & Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University working in the areas of composition theory & practice, rhetorical pedagogy & history, community engagement, professional writing, new media studies, developmental writing, and disability studies. My dissertation, "Friction in Our Machinery: Rhetorical Education at the New York State Asylum-School, 1854-1884," examines rhetoric and writing practices at a non-traditional school where curriculum centered around social and civic relation, language practices, and bodily transformation. I was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Community & Public Engagement in 2009 for my work connecting disability communities with undergraduate students via oral histories and advocacy writing. Recent publications of mine include an article on re-negotiation of the "normal" in composition classrooms in Open Words: Access and English Studies (forthcoming), a case study in campus activism in the Journal of Post-secondary Education and Disability, and a discussion of rhetorical facility in the production of life writing in a/b: Autobiography Studies.