Bryna Siegel Finer, Ph.D.

assistant professor & composition coordinator, The hunter division of humanities

bsiegelfiner@svc.edu
Everett Mansion 356
802-447-6365 

Education

  • Ph.D., Rhetoric and Composition, University of Rhode Island
  • Ed.M., English Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
  • M.F.A., Creative Writing/Poetry, Sarah Lawrence College
  • B.A., English Writing and Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh

Teaching experience

  • University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, Rhode Island School of Design, College of New Rochelle, Iona College, College of Mount Saint Vincent, SUNY Westchester Community College 

Courses

  • English Composition I and II
  • Advanced English Composition
  • Advanced Creative Writing Workshops
  • Editing and Publication Design
  • Writing Lab 

academic/Research interests

Student research writing, writing for social change, writing teacher education, rhetorical genre theory

Why I teach

I believe change happens by individuals and that writing is one of the most effective ways to create change. I work to give students the tools to better their individual situations, their local communities and the various worlds in which they find themselves, so that ultimately all of our worlds will be better.

publications and presentations

  • "Transitional Students, Transitional Pedagogy: Reconsidering 'The Research Paper'." Forthcoming in Modern Language Studies.
  • "Book Review: Engaged Writers Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life." College English Association Forum, 36.2, 2008.
  • Presented papers at the conferences of College Composition and Communication (CCCC), College English Association (CEA), Northeast Writing Center Association (NEWCA), Popular Culture Association (PCA) and others. 

areas of expertise

Composition studies, Rhetorical theory, Genre theory 

Favorite Book

This is a hard one for an English professor! I love anything by Mark Doty, Jhumpa Lahiri, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and David Sedaris.

Favorite film

Star Wars, Reality Bites and almost anything by Wes Anderson. I'm much more of a TV addict than a film buff; I love The Office, Project Runway, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy and The Simpsons.

Best part of being at SVC

I was drawn to SVC immediately by the warmth of the community - the faculty, administrators and students all seemed to know each other and everyone seemed genuinely enthusiastic about being a part of the school. I'm thrilled to join this inspired community of learners.

Highlights

April 2011 - Wrote an article, “Writing Center Sustainability Through Collaborative Research,” to be published in Academic Exchange Quarterly in their Winter 2011 issue on writing center theory and practice and will be featured as an Editor’s Choice selection.

March 2011 - Composition Coordinator Bryna Siegel Finer, Provost Al DeCiccio and Humanities Division Chair Scott O’Callaghan presented at the SUNY Council on Writing annual conference in Binghamton, N.Y. Professor Siegel Finer presented on efforts already underway to reshape the first-year writing course sequence at SVC, which includes adapting a genre approach in the classroom, as well as more situated and rhetorical approaches to composition, research and service-learning.

May 2010 - Worked with leading scholars in rhetoric on research project related to dissertation work at the conference of the Rhetoric Society of America in Minneapolis, Minn.

March 2010 - Presented a talk entitled "Persistence, Resistance, and Change: Rethinking Researched Writing" at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Louisville, KY.

September 2009 - Her article, “Transitional Students, Transitional Pedagogy: Reconsidering the Traditional,” will be published in the winter 2009 edition of Modern Language Studies, the journal of the Northeast Modern Language Association. The article discusses the need for an approach to teaching writing that is specific to transitional students (e.g., first-generation students, academically unprepared students, ESL students, etc). Siegel Finer’s article primarily argues that the teaching of “the traditional college research paper” (to any students) needs to be revised using an approach that encourages rhetorical awareness and critical literacy.