Writing, Cognition & Emotion, First-Year Writing Pedagogy, Writing Program Administration, Rhetorical Genre Studies, Trauma Studies, Rhetorical Listening & Rhetorical Empathy, Rhetorics of Health & Medicine
Dr. Emily Rónay Johnston (she/her/hers) has been teaching in higher education since 2004. Her research and teaching center on writing as a cognitive practice that fosters resilience.
Currently, she is supported by a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2024–2026), through which she is pursuing training in psychology and neuroscience to develop approaches to writing and writing pedagogy that are grounded in the science of resilience. Her book-in-progress, Writing is Resilience: Fostering Agency and Transformation in First-Year Composition, argues that students can cultivate resilience through writing as they exercise agency and reshape their responses to uncertainty.
Her article on writing as a resilience practice is forthcoming in The Conversation. Her work appears in Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, Writers: Craft & Context, and several edited collections.
She has taught courses in composition, rhetoric, and composition pedagogy, as well as English for multilingual writers, ethnic studies, film, gender and sexuality studies, and creative writing. She has served on numerous curricular, assessment, and equity-focused committees across the UC system.
Dr. Johnston holds a Ph.D. in English Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from Illinois State University, an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a B.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of California, Davis.
