Dr. Amy Rupiper Taggart

NDSU and Fargo were my first job and home following graduate school, and I
liked it so much I decided to stay. I've been here since 2002, teaching
writing at all levels from first-year to graduate and of all types, from
academic to public to professional. A couple of the courses I teach
frequently are Writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences and Literacy,
Culture, and Identity. Much of my teaching involves community based writing,
writing that does work in the world outside the classroom. I am also the Director of First-Year Writing (English 110 and 120).

My BA is from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. I spent a year
in between undergraduate and graduate school working as a full-time
volunteer with an organization called the Women's Bean Project, an
innovative job and life skills program for women in transition in Denver;
this work significantly affected my scholarly and professional trajectory.
My PhD in Rhetoric and Composition is from Texas Christian University; it
was at TCU that I learned about service learning and community literacy as a
subfield of composition.

Most of my research is pedagogical; I tend to ask questions particularly
about how community based writing can enhance teaching and learning in
writing studies and what best practices of community based writing
instruction look like. I am continually interested in the relationships
among metacognition, reflection, and experience in writers, which is why I
so frequently am drawn back into Donald Schon's work on reflective
practitioners. I also can't seem to stop dipping back into research on
Jessie Redmon Fauset, a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, looking
through the lens of social movement rhetoric. I hope to be able to do more
with this knowledge, both in terms of teaching and scholarship.

My CV can be found at http://amy.tagg-art.com

Last updated March 18, 2008.