PhD Candidate

Rhetoric and Writing

Contact Information

Email: ajodasso@unm.edu
 

Biography

AJ Odasso received their BA in English from Wellesley College, MA in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies from the University of York (UK), and MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Boston University. They have been teaching as an adjunct for around a decade, between York, BU, CNM, and UNM. Prior to coming to UNM’s English Department, they worked full-time as a SHAC administrator and taught part-time in UNM Honors College.

Outside the classroom, AJ is a published poet and serves as one of the Senior Poetry Editors at Strange Horizons magazine (www.strangehorizons.com). AJ’s most recent collection, The Sting of It, won Best LGBT Book in the 2019 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards.

As a new TA and PhD candidate at UNM, AJ plans to focus their research on language, identity, disability, and gender in a writing and rhetoric / composition and rhetoric context (with particular focus on disabled students' and transgender / gender nonconforming students’ experiences).