Selected Research Activities

Brief Bio

• Ph.D. in English
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, August 2000
  • Specialization: Rhetoric and Composition
  • Secondary Area: Cultural Studies
• M.A. in English
  • Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, May 1993
• B.A. in English (Minor: Philosophy)
  • University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, May 1991

Dissertation

• Title: "Cultural Rhetorics of Deviance"
• Brief Description: A study of the rhetorical construction of "deviance" in "true crime" detective magazines of the post-WW II era

Current Projects

• lesson research (see website): a collaborative classroom inquiry project (with Terry Beck, Bill Cerbin and Susan Crutchfield)
• integrating sources: an inquiry into how composition students integrate sources into their writing as a form of "progressive discourse"
• critical reading as rhetorical invention: an exploration of how "critical reading" functions as rhetorical invention
• plagiarism: an examination of rhetorical ethos as it applies to new writing technologies, with special focus on plagiarism websites (pilot article: "Cheating the System: Composition, Consumerism, and the Curriculum" published in Radical Teacher)
• rhetorical situations: a reassessment of the notion of the "rhetorical situation" in light of cultural theories of postmodernism and globalism