Rhetoric and Composition
Florida State University
405 Williams Building
Tallahassee, Florida
32306-1580
Phone: 850 644 4230
Fax: 850 644 0811
At Florida State University we offer two graduate programs in rhetoric and composition: an M.A. program in Rhetoric and Composition and a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in Rhetoric and Composition. In each we focus on rhetorical and social practices and theories of composing and composition, particularly emphasizing the relationships between texts (print, audio, visual, and digital), technologies, and literacies. In addition to offering a repertoire of challenging courses and various connections to the field, the program features a hospitable environment for graduate students.
As members of the graduate program, we—students and faculty—often work on research together. For example, TAs and faculty have presented together at conferences (for example, National Council of Teachers of English); several of us have submitted "combined" panels for CCCC. In addition, a team of graduate students and faculty wrote and were awarded a 2006-2007 CCCC research grant. We gather regularly to "read and eat" at a faculty member's home or a local spot, where we discuss current articles and plan collaborative projects. And all doctoral students enroll each semester in a one-hour reading course, where MA students are welcome as well. Not least, each term we host at least one distinguished scholar in rhetoric and composition who shares with us his or her latest research.
Congrats to Matt Davis for accepting a tenure-track assistant professorship of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston! This position will offer him opportunities to teach both undergraduate and graduate classes in composition, new media literacy, and rhetoric.
Congrats to our award-winning faculty! Congratulations to Dr. Yancey for being named the 2012 recipient of the prestigious Purdue University's Distinguished Women Scholars Award! Dr. Yancey has also received Florida State University's high-competitive 2011 Distinguished Research Professor Award.
Kudos as well to both Dr. Lathan and Dr. Fleckenstein for receiving the Transformation Through Teaching Award, presented by FSU's Spiritual Life Project. Dr. Fleckenstein is also the recipient of a 2011 University Graduate Teaching Award. Congrats to all of you!
On April 11, the Center for Everyday Writing will host a day-long conference entitled "Archives with a View: Everyday Writing and What It Can Teach Us." The event will include "Postcards and Their Archives: Creating and Curating a Digital Archive" by Dr. Neal, Stephen McElroy and Katie Bridgman; "Vernacular Memorials as Multimodal Compositions: Understanding Collaborative, Communal Compositions of the Everyday" by Leigh Graziano; and reflections on utilizing everyday writing by Dr. Yancey. Take a look at the program here. [view flyer]
Starting in the Spring 2012 semester, R/C grads will begin teaching ENC3021, the Rhetoric course component for the EMW program for the first time since EWM's inception. Best of luck to Matt Davis, Leigh Graziano, Stephen McElroy, Josh Mehler, Jennifer O'Malley, Elizabeth Power, Rory Lee, and Natalie Szymanski!
February 16, 2012 Linda Flower, Dr. Linda Flower is a Professor of Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University. Motivated by the need for a more integrated social-cognitive approach to writing, Flower's recent research focuses on how writers construct negotiated meaning in the midst of conflicting internal and social voices. Dr. Flower is the author, editor and co-editor of eight books, including Reading-to-Write: Exploring a Cognitive and Social Process, The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory, and Learning to Rival: A Literate Practice for Intercultural Inquiry. In 2009, her Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement won the Rhetorical Society of America's Book Award for work in rhetorical study. In her presentation, "Creating Controversy: A Working Theory of Community Engagement through Local Public Deliberation", Dr. Flower argues that if academics wish to exchange the mantel of "public intellectual" for the role of "community partner," we will need to develop more grounded, working theories of deliberation in local publics and methods to support it. She will argue that community think tanks, organized by students and teachers, might offer a place to test working theories of engagement in the local publics of a community or university.
October 6, 2011 Jacqueline Jones Royster, Jacqueline Jones Royster is Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, holds the Ivan Allen Jr. Dean's Chair in Liberal Arts and Technology, and is Professor of English in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research centers on rhetorical studies, literacy studies, and women's studies, areas in which she has authored and co-authored numerous articles and book chapters. She is the author of three books: Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1997), Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women (2000), and Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003 (2003). In her presentation, "Rhetorical Studies in a Time of Change", Dr. Royster reflects on rhetorical studies and asks: Where are we now? How can we tell? She proposes opportunities for expanding the experiences and performances that serve as a springboard for rhetorical studies as a "modern" enterprise.
February 16, 2011 Gunther Kress, Gunther Kress is Professor of Semiotics and Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. His interests are in meaning-making and communication in contemporary environments; with an interest in developing a social semiotic theory of multimodal communication. Some (more recent) books are Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication (2002) with T van Leeuwen; Literacy in the new media age (2003); and Multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication (2010). In his presentation, "Writing in the frame of a social semiotic multimodal theory of composition," he will examine some currently important terms, such as composition, design, writing, and will necessarily raise again the essential notion of genre.
September 8, 2010 Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Lynée Lewis Gaillet is associate professor of rhetoric and composition at Georgia State University. She is past president of the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition and past executive director of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. She is the editor of Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influences (Hermagoras/Erlbaum), coeditor with Michelle Eble of Stories of Mentoring: Theory and Praxis (Parlor Press), and coeditor with Winifred Horner of the second edition of The Present State of Research in the History of Rhetoric (University of Missouri Press). She is author of numerous book chapters and journal articles addressing contemporary writing instruction and the history of rhetoric/writing practices. In her presentation "Everyday Archives", she will discuss the recent commercial and scholarly resurgence in primary research and discuss ways academics can ride that wave in their writing and teaching.
February 11,
2010 Charles Bazerman, Charles Bazerman is Professor of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Chair of CCCC. He is interested in the social dynamics of writing, rhetorical theory, and the rhetoric of knowledge production and use. He has been active in developing graduate degree objectives in rhetoric, literacy, and communication at UCSB and previously at Georgia Tech. His recently edited Handbook of Research on Writing won the 2009 CCCC Outstanding Book Award. In his presentation, he will discuss how writing studies as an organized field of research is new and dispersed, under the title, "Writing Research: What does it add up to? Where is it heading? What is visibly missing? What is invisible? Who has the eyes to see it?"
October 29, 2009 Shirley Logan, Shirley Wilson Logan is Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at the University of Maryland, where she teaches courses in composition theory and pedagogy, history of rhetoric, nineteenth century rhetoric, and writing. Professor Logan's current projects include a study of Amanda Berry Smith's religious discourse and further exploration into the literacy practices of black Civil War soldiers and post-Reconstruction African Americans, which was the subject of chapter one of her 2008 book, Liberating Language. In her talk, she will discuss this topic and what future research promises to uncover, under the title, "Free Floating Literacies, Then and Now."
March 30, 2009 Beverly
Moss, Beverly Moss, Associate Professor of English at the Ohio State University, focuses both on community literacy, especially in African American communities, and on writing centers. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on composition theory and criticism, literacy theories and practices, qualitative research methodologies and basic writing. Author of several articles addressing composition and pedagogy and African American Rhetoric, she is also the editor of Literacy Across Communities and the co-editor of Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom.
February 16, 2009
Charles Schuster, Associate Dean for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. While at FSU, he met with nine PhD and MA students on research projects they were currently working on. With an inviting manner and a light sense of humor, Dr. Schuster gave professional feedback on publishing and research questions as well as on drafts. Afterward, Dr. Yancey hosted a pot luck dinner where Dr. Schuster gave a quick talk on the future of publishing in rhetoric and composition and enjoyed socializing with members of the rhet/comp program.
January 12, 2009
Deborah Brandt, Deborah Brandt, Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Wisconsin Madison, researches literacy, specifically social and economic histories of mass literacy, and the status of mass writing within late twentieth and early twenty-first century culture, diversity, equity, and access in literacy learning. At the University of Wisconsin Madison she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in literacy, writing studies, and qualitative research methods. Brandt currently is working on a project following her award-winning volume Literacy in American Lives, entitled Writing Now: New Directions in Mass Literacy, which explores the ascendancy of writing as a second stage of mass literacy.
December 1, 2008 Donald
Leu, Donald J. Leu, the John and Maria Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology at the University of Connecticut, studies reading generally and new literacies more specifically. His current research focuses primarily on new skills, strategies, and instructional tools needed to prepare students for learning to read and write with Internet technologies. At the University of Connecticut, he also directs the New Literacies Research Lab, and he is a past President of the National Reading Conference. With more than 100 research publications and seventeen books, Leus research showcases his dedication both to teaching and to finding ways to bridge new technologies and literacies.
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: Bret Zawilski
Bret Zawilski is a first-year Ph.D. student in Rhetoric and Composition, a Teaching Assistant in the First-Year Composition Program, and a Tutor in the Digital Studio. Bret graduated from Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania with B.A. in Music and English. He earned his M.A. in Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication from James Madison University, where he also taught courses in First-Year Composition and Technical Communication. His research interests include first-year composition pedagogy, learning transfer, and digital rhetoric. He is also an avid fan of science fiction, creative writing, and jazz performance.
Current research: "Right now I'm spending a lot of my time researching new media literacies." Drawing from Anne Wysocki's definition of new media texts as "those that have been made by composers who are aware of the range of materiality of texts and who then highlight the materiality," Bret is exploring the connections between these meta-cognitive aspects of new media literacies and knowledge transfer.
Currently reading: "One of the books I've read recently that has really got me thinking about new media literacy is Jody Shipka's Toward a Composition Made Whole where she claims that composition is an act that can be articulated through all kinds of media, describes how she applies this idea in the classroom, and makes an argument for a 'mediated action framework'—an idea that I'm still grappling with. I'm also reading a lot into transfer, especially Anne Beaufort's College Writing and Beyond; I've also really identified with Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle's article on the Writing About Writing movement, exploring first-year composition courses as an introduction to writing studies."
Current insight: "This is me reflecting on my recent CCCC's experience, but it is incredible to be exposed to a field that is so welcoming and open… experiencing the climate of the field [in St. Louis] and seeing all these individuals interacting and applying theories in different ways—there's a flexibility in rhetoric and composition—it's wonderful to finally find those other voices out there that reflect your thinking and your concerns. There's always that support there to help you grapple with the ideas that you want to grapple with."
