Noel Tague

Noel Thistle Tague holds a Ph.D. in Critical and Cultural Studies, with a focus on Composition and Rhetoric, from the University of Pittsburgh. Before coming to Pitt, she completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Montana, where she taught her first college-level writing course. She has experience teaching public and professional writing, creative writing, composing with digital media, and first-year composition. While her assignments may range from technical reports to documentary poetry, all of her courses reflect an investment in writing as a vehicle for civic engagement, advocacy, and ethical calls to action.

Professor Tague grew up in the Thousand Islands region of northern New York State. Her research focuses on civic engagement in rural communities (like the one she comes from), the rhetorical construction of rural place, and rhetorics surrounding energy production and its impacts on the environment, the economy, and the body. Current projects include a book manuscript about the controversy of large-scale wind energy development in northern New York, as well as a collection of lyric poetry and prose called Voice-O-Graph, 1954, which prominently features the Boston Consumptives Hospital.