Website: www.melisacahnmanntaylor.com

Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the author of five books in education, poetry, and the arts. Her most recent book is Enlivening Instruction with Drama & Improv: A guide for Second Language and World Language Teachers (2021). She is the author of a book of poems, Imperfect Tense (2016) and three other books on the arts of language and education: Teachers Act Up: Creating Multicultural Community Through Theatre (2010) & Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice, first and second editions (2008; 2018). Currently, she completes a sixth book entitled The Creative Ethnographer's Notebook, a creative writing guide for anthropology students to be released by Routledge (2024)

Misha’s poems, essays, research articles, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals in print and online including TESOL Quarterly, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Anthropology & Humanism, Poet Lore, Mom Egg, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Calyx Magazine, American Poetry Review, and in many other scholarly and literary homes.

Some of Misha’s awards include the Beckman award for “Professors Who Inspire Social Change,” Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg and Anna Davidson poetry prizes, Jenny Penny Oliver Diversity Award, First Year Odyssey Teaching Award, and the Foreign Language Association of Georgia [FLAG] Leadership Award.

In 2020 Misha was appointed as U.S. Fulbright Ambassador scholar to speak to faculty audiences around the U.S. about Fulbright. A Fulbright Scholarship recipient (Oaxaca Mexico, 2013-2014) and visiting scholar-artist in Guanajuato Mexico at the Resplandor Center (2017), she enjoys speaking internationally in Mexico, Israel, Canada, Chile, Poland, Germany, Hong Kong, Aruba, Spain, and elsewhere around the world. Cahnmann-Taylor has directed a U.S. Department of Education Transition to Teaching grant and numerous National Endowment for the Arts Big Read and Georgia Humanities grants.

A graduate of the New England College low-residency MFA program and the University of Pennsylvania’s Educational Linguistics doctoral program, she lives in Athens, Georgia with her husband, two children and their rescue dog, Bagel.

Website: www.melisacahnmanntaylor.com

Twitter Username: @cahnmann

Publications

• Imperfect Tense , Whitepoint Press (July 2016)
• Enlivening Education with Drama & Improv: A Guide for Second and Foreign Language Teachers , Routledge (December 21, 2020)
• Arts-Based Research in Education (second edition) , Routledge (January 2018)
• Teachers Act Up: Creating Multicultural Community Through Theatre , Teachers College Press (2010)
• Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice , Routledge (2008)

Awards

• University of Arizona Richard Ruiz Scholar-Artist Residency, Guanajuato, MX(2017)
• Beckman Award for Professors Who Inspire(2015)
• Fulbright Award(2013)
• Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Awards (3)(2005)
• National Endowment for the Arts Big Read Award(2015)
• NEA Big Read Award(2016)
• NEA Big Read Award(2017)
• NEA Big Read Award(2020)

Employment

• Professor at University of Georgia

Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Tufts University
• Master of Arts in Education from University of Santa Cruz
• Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from New England College
• Doctoral Degree in Educational Linguistics from University of Pennsylvania

Genres of Interest

Creative nonfiction, Playwriting, Children's literature , Poetry