Virginia Crisco

Dr. Virginia (Ginny) Crisco graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2005 with a PhD in English, specializing in Rhetoric, Literacy Studies, and Composition Theory and Pedagogy. As a co-coordinator for the first-year writing program at CSUF, Dr. Crisco mentors Teaching Assistants, designs curriculum and creates program policies, and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, literacy studies, and composition theory and pedagogy.

Dr. Crisco’s teaching and research interests include composition theory, classroom & community literacy, pedagogy & teacher development, race & gender studies, and activist and/or women’s rhetoric. She has presented several papers on these topics at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Conferences of The National Council of Teachers of English, the Biennial Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference, and the Conference of The National Women’s Studies Association.

In addition, she has published essays in Pedagogy and The Journal of Basic Writing and in the edited collection Developmental Education: Policy and Practice. Her dissertation, Activist Literacy: Engaging Democracy in the Classroom and the Community coined the concept “activist literacy,” defined as the rhetorical use of literacy for democratic participation, to reconsider the literacy and pedagogy of public writing and civic participation to inform the spaces of the classroom and the community. She is currently working on publishing parts of this dissertation in various journals in the field of composition and rhetoric.

Dr. Crisco lives with her husband Michael Crisco in the Tower district, where they enjoy gardening, going to art shows, and walking the neighborhood. A native of Seattle, Dr. Crisco moved to Fresno (after living in Wiesbaden, Germany and Los Angeles) where she earned her AA in liberal studies from Fresno City College and received both her BA and MA in English from California State University, Fresno.