GWS Tutoring Staff

Meet Our Tutors

Graduate Writing Service tutors are experienced writers and teachers of writing from multiple disciplines -- with scholarly and professional backgrounds in the humanities and social and physical sciences. Some of us are also instructors of languages other than English.

We are are available weekdays and evenings to work with Cornell graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and staff to refine and develop strategies for drafting and revising writing projects and teaching materials.

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Schedule appointments @ https://cornell.mywconline.com

write@knight
#writelikeabear

Benedetta Carnaghi

PhD Candidate, History & FWS Graduate Instructor

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the History department. My doctoral project focuses on Fascist and Nazi spies before and during the Second World War. I love investigating spies’ stories, and I love when they come alive on the written page! I have taught a FWS focused on writing about spies, titled “A Life Under Cover: Spies in History, Fiction and Cinema.” I am also the current co-coordinator of a group called “Historians Are Writers!” (HAW!). I share the group’s belief that historians should also focus on their skills as writers and storytellers. I find telling meaningful stories and compelling arguments in an engaging way to be a rewarding experience, and I enjoy helping others to also discover that pleasure.

Being at a later stage in the doctoral program, I have experience with the full spectrum of texts, from seminar papers to journal articles, conference presentations, and fellowship applications, which graduate students are required to write during the course of their studies. As a tutor, I am eager to help with these projects at all stages. I have also been awarded a number of internationally competitive grants and fellowships to conduct my research abroad, so I am happy to assist clients with their applications. I understand that writing can be difficult, even daunting sometimes, so if you feel stuck, do not suffer alone—come discuss your ideas, and re-discover with me how exciting your project is!

Jordan Garcia

PhD Candidate, Zamudio Lab, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

I am a third-year PhD Candidate studying in the field of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. My work seeks to quantify the mechanisms of local adaptation in thermal tolerance in salamanders. I study how amphibians adapted to past climate change to better understand the constraints on adaptive potential for the future and identify populations of concern for conservation.

I enjoy communicating across disciplines, and I look forward to working with writers from differing backgrounds. As a tutor, I like to focus on argument structure and storytelling. My strengths are helping others with clarity and concision.

Tamar Gutfeld

PhD Student, German Studies

I am a PhD student in German studies, working on notions of rupture, continuity and return. I taught two introductory courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and worked as an academic mentor to students in their last stages of their MA.

As a tutor, I am interested in working with students from all disciplines on organizing their writing, making sure their most important ideas and arguments receive the place they deserve. In any sort of project and in any stage of its composition, I pay close attention to the framework, flow and the tone of the text. I enjoy asking questions and exploring the text together with its writer in addition to discussing writing techniques and strategies.

Jayme Kilburn

PhD Candidate, Performing and Media Arts & FWS Graduate Instructor

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Performing and Media Arts Department. My work focuses on feminist performance, specifically women stage directors. My dissertation puts interviews I have conducted in conversation with performance history and theory. Through this research, I attempt to make visible the important work women directors have contributed to the field. As a teacher and tutor, I am interested in developing succinct arguments, using clear and concise language, and adapting to the demands of academic writing. In my first-year writing seminars - “Politics, Propaganda, and Performance” and “Sex Acts: American Drama 1950-Present” - I work with students to develop both their critical and creative voice while also focusing on the overall flow and clarity of their work. I am excited to work with clients on all aspects of writing including pedagogical statements, job materials, grants, and dissertation chapters.

Carol-Rose Little

PhD Candidate, Linguistics & Former FWS Graduate Instructor

I am a PhD candidate in the linguistics department, where I do fieldwork on the syntax and semantics of nominal structures in Ch'ol and Tojol-ab'al, two Mayan languages of Chiapas, Mexico. In addition to formalizing patterns of understudied natural languages, I also develop and advocate for decolonizing and indigenizing collaborative methodologies for conducting linguistic fieldwork. As a FWS instructor and tutor, I enjoy working on concision, clarity and getting-to-the-point-ness. I also believe that even the most complicated subjects can be presented in a way that both experts and complete novices can understand and find value in.

Benjamin Sales

PhD Candidate, Philosophy & FWS Graduate Instructor

I'm a 5th year PhD student in the Philosophy department, researching free will and interpersonal relationships. I've taught courses on justice, philosophy of law, free will, personal identity, moral responsibility, and authenticity.

When it comes to writing, the techniques utilized in philosophy can be very helpful when applied to other subject areas, too.This is because philosophy, as a discipline, focuses on rigorous and careful argumentation, word choice, and structure. My skill set is thus amenable to helping those who are aiming to write as clearly and concisely as possible, with the goal of conveying an argument or point with extreme clarity. I enjoy working on projects at all stages - from knowing where to start with an idea, to making final edits on a near-complete paper.

Leigh York

PhD Candidate, German Studies & FWS Graduate Instructor

I am a PhD Candidate in German Studies. My dissertation is on narrative form in nineteenth-century German novels, with additional interests in critical theory, media studies, and popular culture from 1750 until today. As a teacher and tutor I am particularly interested in helping writers across all disciplines develop a clear voice and a compelling narrative- or argumentative arc. I enjoy working on clarity and precision of language at the sentence level as well as on larger questions of organization and flow, and I hope to help writers hone each text for a specific audience and purpose.

2020 Summer Tutors

George Spisak, PhD Candidate, Development Sociology & FWS Graduate Instructor

I am a PhD candidate in Development Sociology working on the ways that sovereignty has been actively remade in the modern world. I investigate this by looking at Somalia, geographically, and piracy specifically but without limiting my focus to Somali piracy or maritime piracy. Understanding piracy as a locus of competing sovereignties that lie outside of the normative conceptual framework requires engagement across a variety of topical areas including intellectual property, nuclear proliferation, and theoretical conceptions of waste.

I look forward to tutoring writers at all stages of their graduate careers, and from any discipline. I like to focus on helping students understand how to identify the gap between what they write, what they think, and what they think they've written.

Appointments@GWS

Writers and teachers of writing can schedule 30- or 60-minute face-to-face meetings and online appointments (using a video and messaging platform). Tutors can also provide written feedback on drafts through our eTutoring system.

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Schedule appointments @ https://cornell.mywconline.com

GWS Director

Tracy Hamler Carrick, PhD

John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, Cornell Univeristy, Ithaca Campus

tracyhcarrick@cornell.edu

Writing Workshop Director
Graduate Writing Service Director
Senior Lecturer of Writing

Cornell Faculty Bio @ https://knight.as.cornell.edu/tracy-hamler-carrick

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