Victoria Boyntonv with student
Victoria Boynton
Associate Professor
English Department
113C Old Main
SUNY Cortland
(607) 753-2082
Boyntonv@cortland.edu

Victoria
Professional Writing
Creative Writing
Multicultural Literatures

My current intellectual projects

Contraptions, a chapbook of poems composed with artist Marney Leiberman, published by Stockport Flats Press

Jo Malin and I are editing An Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography, a scholarly project through the Greenwood Press. To see the proposed contents and a sample entry, click this link. If you would like to comment on the project or be considered as a contributor, e-mail me.

Herspace: Women, Writing, and Solitude, the collection of essays, which I contributed to and co-edited with my friend Jo Malin, is available from Haworth Press ( 2003).

My teaching philosophy

Teacher-centered classes are familiar to all of us: I stand up front and tell students what is important; they write down my ideas as I profess them; and then I test them to see whether they have my ideas. Student-centered learning, on the other hand, begins with the diverse responses of students to their own writing and reading and to the ideas of others in the class. The teacher's voice becomes one among many, and the "right" answer to questions about what writing and reading means is transformed into a negotiation. In student-centered classes, writing and reading are more like intellectual playgrounds than rituals of figuring out what the teacher wants. Meaning, as the result of collaboration and play, becomes multiple and yields more than a single significance in a single mind. Finally, students in my classes practice composing their own questions about their writing and reading and choose their own directions of inquiry. In these ways, students shape my courses by taking responsibility for their own learning.

My emphasis on diversity

I would like to live in a peaceful world where people go beyond tolerance for difference to an understanding and deep appreciation of diversity. I hope I am an agent of social justice as a result of the work I do in and out of class with my students. As the sign in my office window reads, No Justice, No Peace. Here is a link to a longer statement of my beliefs and practices.

My most frequently taught courses

Revising and Editing
(PWR 410)

 This Professional Writing core course sensitizes us to language on the page. We look at how to adjust our writing in order to connect to others. We explore how the organizational structures and writing style we choose affect audience. We also discuss the etiquette of editing in a variety of situations--how to collaborate with others to achieve the most powerful writing possible.

Writing Poetry
(PWR 213)

 Language of the head, the heart, and the gut-- poetry is powerful. We explore many ways that poets have used to create this intense fabric of language we call poetry and then we write and write and write and share our writing.

Writing Fiction
(PWR 212)

 As we practice writing short fiction, we also look at what writers say about their creative process, share great examples of stories we admire, then write lots of stories ourselves. We will find that fiction isn't just the sum of its parts--plot, character, setting and the like. It's the way our minds process the stories of our realities, the way we make meaning and lend our lives significance. Isn't everything fiction?

Writing Workshop
(ENG 306)

 The Writing Workshop is a sampler of writing for Elementary Education majors: we write about our personal experience, play with language through poetry and short fiction, explain and argue ideas that are important to us. We experiment with how writing can touch readers and help us get us in touch with ourselves.

Women in Literature
(ENG261)

 This General Education course focuses on gender and its literary expression. We write short essays about our responses to our choice of literature and explore how we come to think of ourselves as either men or women. Themes include the body, sexual objectification, conventions of gender, such as marriage, and alternatives to destructive cultural images and practices.

Teaching materials

Senior Seminar in Professional Writing

ENG261: Women in Literature basic information

Anne Petry's The Street: A Contextual Guide

Women's Literature Resources

My scholarly interests

I have written rhetorical analyses of multicultural literature; theories and descriptions of collaborative teaching and learning; and applications of whiteness studies and feminist theory. This link contains a list of publications that indicate the directions my scholarship has taken. To see a list of my projects, click here.

My poems

Contraptions

Contraptions: for blessing

3 Husbands

My personal life

"All learning is accompanied by pain." (ascribed to Aristotle)

Family photo

Nov. 3,2008