Contact Information
Biography
Areas of Specialization
Rhetorical theory, public and material rhetorics, research methods, urban and spatial theory, political theory, rhetoric and composition, community-engaged and place-based approaches
Research and Teaching Interests
Working at the intersections of rhetorical studies and composition studies, my work focuses on education and urban justice and engages in critical place-based approaches to studying public rhetoric and writing, political discourse, and ethical communication and action across difference. I understand language and culture as tied to the places and material conditions of everyday life. For me, this means that studying rhetoric is inextricable from studying place and that practicing rhetoric is to engage in worldmaking labors.
My first book, Democracy’s Lot: Rhetoric, Publics, and the Places of Invention (U of Alabama 2016), is an ethnographic study of everyday rhetorics and democracy-in-action in a politically, racially, and economically diverse Chicago neighborhood where stakeholders clashed over public space and urban development projects. My second book, Rhetorical Climatology (Michigan State Press, 2023) is a co-authored multigraph with Chris Ingraham, Jennifer LeMesurier, Bridie McGreavy, Nathan Stormer, and John Ackerman that explores institutional, ableist, racist, and environmental climates. Other scholarly projects and publications I’ve been part of focus on community-engaged and public writing, antiracist and equity-oriented writing pedagogy and program transformation, and theories and approaches to writing across difference.
I believe teaching and mentoring is the most important work I do here. I teach courses on composition theory and pedagogy; urban justice; critical place and geography; research methods and community-engaged approaches; rhetorical theory; rhetoric, ecology, and materiality; teacher development and equity-oriented pedagogies; and public rhetoric and writing. I directed UW’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) from 2014-2021, and I’m currently the faculty coordinator for PWR’s UW in the High School dual-enrollment writing program.
Research
Selected Research
- Sumyat Thu, Katie Malcolm, Candice, Rai, and Anis Bawarshi. “Anti-Racist Translingual Praxis in Writing Ecologies.” Writing Across Difference: Theory and Intervention. Eds. James Rushing Daniel, Katie Malcolm, and Candice Rai. Utah State UP. 2022.
- Daniel, James Rushing, Katie Malcolm, and Candice Rai, eds. Writing Across Difference: Theory and Intervention. Utah UP, 2022
- Gottschalk Drushcke, Caroline and Candice Rai. "“Making Worlds with Cyborg Fish.” Tracing Rhetoric and Material Life: Ecological Appoaches. George F. McHendry, Jr., Justine Wells, Bridie McGreavy, and Samantha Senda-Cook, Eds. Palgrave Macmillian’s Studies in Media and Environmental Communication Series, 2018.
- Rai, Candice and Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Eds. Field Rhetoric: Ethnography, Ecology, and Engagement in the Places of Persuasion. University of Alabama UP, 2018.
- Rai, Candice. Democracy's Lot: Rhetoric, Publics, and the Places of Invention. University of Alabama Press, 2016.
- Candice Rai. “Publics, Power and the Rhetorics of Democracy.” The Public Work of Rhetoric. University of South Carolina Press, 2010.
- Candice Rai. with Ann Feldman and Megan Marie. “Assessing Student Writing and Learning.” Making Writing Matter: Redesigning First Year Composition for the Engaged University. SUNY Press. 2008.
- Candice Rai. with Ann Feldman. “The Impact of Partnership-Centered, Community-Based Learning on First-Year Students’ Academic Research Papers.” Michigan Journal of Community Service 13.1 (2006), 16-29.
Research Advised
- Taylor, Rebecca. Writing in the Margins: Critical Multimodal Literacies and Writing Pedagogies Across the Curriculum. 2025. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Lovett, Sara. Making Change, Changing Spaces: An Antiracist Writing Ecology for First-Generation College Students. 2022. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Peterson, Shane. The Rhetorics of Crisis and Apocalypse in the Intermountain West. 2021. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Telegen, Joseph. Empathy Passage: Toward a Presentational Genealogy of the Rhetorics of Antisemistism and Israel/Palestine. 2020. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Pratt, Jacqui. Delivering Rhetorical Entanglements. 2019. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Campbell, Lillian. Simulating Nursing: Rhetoric, Materiality, and Disciplinary Learning. 2016. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Mitchler, Sharon. Towards Using Critical Rural Pedagogy with Rural Community College Students in Undergraduate American Literature Classes. 2015. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- LeMesurier, Jennifer. Bodies that Move You: the Rhetorical Force of the Dancing Body. 2014. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Melanya Materne, "Literature in the Common Core State Standards: A Critique," 2012.
- Melanya Sophia Materne. Teaching Literature for College and Career Readiness: A Response to the Common Core State Standards. Honors Thesis, University of Washington. 2012.
- Read, Sarah. Network Rhetoric: A Network Ethnography of Knowledge Work of System Builders in Child Care and Early Learning. 2011. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.