Areas of Specialization
Rhetoric and Composition Studies, Rhetorical Genre Theory and Invention, Writing Knowledge Transfer, Writing Program Administration, Writing Pedagogy.
Activities and Interests
Broadly conceived, scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition studies examines the conditions—social, political, economic, material, and cognitive—that shape how and why texts are produced, what texts do, and how texts can be taught. I am drawn to this scholarship not only because of its focus on effects and their production, but also because of its attention to seemingly ordinary cultural productions, including student writing. My research, teaching, and administrative work are all informed by an interest in such complex productions of the everyday. I am especially interested in the role that texts play in organizing, generating, and mediating everyday social practices, relations, commitments, and identities, as well as the complex ways in which individuals, through writing and other forms of language use, situate themselves and are situated within these practices in order to do things in the world. For me, writing (its study, teaching, and administration) is inseparable from the forms of social participation it enables or the forms of social organization it helps to coordinate and produce.