Valeria Tsygankova

I love the outdoors–especially hiking, running, and rock climbing. My biggest adventures to date include a 400-mile solo trek in the Sierra Nevada and a 200-mile solo trek in the North Cascades. Now that I’ve moved to Maine, I’m excited to get more experience with kayaking, canoeing, and skiing.

Before COA

I taught First-Year Writing, worked in the Writing Center, and served as Program Coordinator for Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program.

Course Areas

writing, rhetoric

• MFA, Creative Writing, New York University (2024)
• PhD, English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University (2019)
• MA, History of the Book, University of London (2012)
• BA, English, University of Pennsylvania (2011)

I have research interests in two disciplines: modern writing pedagogy and nineteenth-century American literature. As a researcher in both fields, I am especially interested in how genre operates. I study how best to support student writers navigating new genres, in college and beyond, and how writers across periods make genre choices, blending, adapting, and transforming genres to serve their creative and intellectual ends. I also have creative nonfiction projects, which focus on human relationships with the natural world and representations of the environment in contemporary culture. 

Publications

V. Tsygankova and V. Guida Messina. (2024). Teaching textual analysis through collaborative online annotation. In A. Cicchino and T. Hicks (Eds.), Better practices: Exploring the teaching of writing in online and hybrid spaces. The WAC Clearinghouse/University Press of Colorado.

Presentations

“Problem-Seeking over Answer-Getting: Auditing Generative AI to Cultivate Intellectual Curiosity.” Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) annual conference. Cleveland, March 2026.

“Collaborating with Creative Writing: Sampling Across Genres in First-Year Writing.” Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) annual conference. Baltimore, April 2025.

“Crossing Creative-Critical Lines in the Writing Center.” International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) annual conference. Baltimore, October 2023.

“Uttering like the Earth: Frederick Douglass’s Terrestrial Reform Theory.” C19: Nineteenth-Century Americanists Biennial Conference. October 2020.

“David Drake: On Time and Clay.” C19: Nineteenth-Century Americanists Biennial Conference. Albuquerque, March 2018.

“From Thing to Person: Frederick Douglass Dilates Freedom’s Timeline.” British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Conference. Exeter, November 2017.

“‘Jamaicas of Prospective, Jamaicas of Remembrance’: Emily Dickinson and Reconstruction.” Dickinson Critical Institute at the Emily Dickinson International Society Conference. Amherst, August 2017.