My current research is centered at the intersection between theorizing writing as a social act, and the study of how social institutions and communities take up writing and discourse to enact change. My conference presentations (at CCCC and Computers & Writing) have looked at how communities marginalized by educational institutions assert their presence and membership (as students and intellectuals) while contending with systemic racism and patriarchy. I have also seen some of these struggles play-out in my WPA work: conversations with students and faculty about writing have informed my questions about the role that institutions play in to defining the purpose of students’ work and their identities as writers. These questions have informed the planning of my dissertation which examines how institutions of higher education construct student writers as subjects (scholars, citizens, and/or workers) through writing and literacy in the academic disciplines.
Reviews and Works in Progress
- “Review: Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference.” The WAC Journal 26.1 (Fall 2016): 155-161. Print.
- “Value, Authority & Choice: The Products of Institutional Discourse.” (in progress)
- “Rhetorics of Agitation: Microaggression Discourses in Digital Student Activism” (in progress)
National Conference Presentations
- Conference on College Composition and Communication, Portland, “Making [Institutional] Ethnography Our Own: Uncovering ‘How Things Happen’ in Writing Program Contexts” (Workshop), March 2017
- Conference on College Composition and Communication, Houston, “Articulating the Values of Writing Across the Curriculum,” April 2016
- Computers and Writing, Pullman, WA, “Death of the Author 2.0 and Other Reflections on Design and Audience,” June 2014
- Conference on College Composition and Communication, Las Vegas, “Rumblr on the Tumblr: Rhetorical Action & Participatory Audience,” March 2013
- Conference on College Composition and Communication, St. Louis, “Convergence in the Classroom: Exploring New Media in Composition” (Workshop), March 2012
Local Conference Presentations
- New England Writing Center Association, “Institutional Narratives and Writing Center Outreach,” Keene, NH, April 2015
- UMass Amherst English Graduate Organization Interdisciplinary Conference, Amherst, “The American Sitcom Witch as a Discourse of Queer Bodies,” April 2015
- UMass Amherst English Graduate Organization Interdisciplinary Conference, Amherst, “Institutional Rhetoric and Writing at a State University: ‘Long Live the New Writing Program,’” March 2014
Professional Development
- Qualitative Research Network, Conference on College Composition and Communication, Dallas, TX, April 2016.
- Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute (competitive application)
- Workshop “Organizing Discourse: Reading and Writing Institutional Histories of Rhetoric” University of Wisconsin – Madison, June 2015
- Graduate Research Network, Computers and Writing, Pullman, WA, June 2014.
[Photo by Travis Grandy, all rights reserved]