Doctoral Students Active in Research

The 2016-2017 academic year showcased the Rhetoric & Writing Ph.D. program’s efforts in scholarship and service. Students and faculty presented and published at an array of venues across the United States. Additionally, several members have been recognized not only at Bowling Green State University but also within the discipline for their exemplary work in the field.

Jonathan Brownlee presented “Power and Pedagogy (Redux): The Problem of Implicit Instruction in Process and Post-Pedagogies” (with Aju Basil James) and “The Unintended Consequences of Social Constructionism in Identity Discourse” at the 2^nd Annual Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies. He also presented “(Re-)Framing Harriet Tubman: Mediated Rhetorical Performance and its Consequences” at Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies Research Symposium. 

Triauna Carey presented “I am Angry. I am Black. I am a Woman” at Ohio State University’s English Graduate Organization Conference where sheI analyzed the role anger plays in the cultural and social constructions of the angry black woman stereotype, especially during social movements that put a spotlight on racism and gender. She also presented “From Shonda Rhimes to Michelle Obama: Re-Imagining the Representation and Complexity of Black Womanhood” at Bowling Green State University’s Ray Browne Conference and offered various solutions to how we can bridge the gap between popular culture and the world of academia. Plus, how we can create a more inclusive culture and promote more diversity in higher education. She presented “Map of the Problematique: An Analysis of Muse through a Rhetorical Lens” at the 2017 National Popular Culture Association Conference in San Diego, California and was recently accepted to the Feminist Theory and Music Conference at San Francisco State University for her Nina Simone proposal titled, “Welcome Back, Miss Simone: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Revival of Nina Simone’s Music in the Twenty-First Century.”  

Tammie Southall, Darlene Johnston, and Maggie Collins will be presenting “Redefining Ideologies: WPA Practices at Higher Learning Institutions” at cWPA. This panel will discuss how various qualitative and quantitative analyses uncover visibility, efficacy, and values that impact writing program administration

Sara Austin presented “I Understand, Now What: Invitational Rhetoric and Transfer in the Composition Classroom” at the Midwest Modern Language Association, which suggested how an intermediate writing course might serve as a way to build students’ understanding of genres.

Lauren Garskie presented “Writing Spaces as Island Formation: Intersections of Design, Multimodality, and Space in Writing Studies” at the College English Association Annual Conference, reflecting on how design and design thinking has shaped discussions in rhetoric and writing about spaces and the kinds of writing that exists in those spaces.

Kristin LaFollette had a book chapter called “Classroom Queerness and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” accepted for publication in the edited collection by Justin P. Jimenez and Nicholas-Brie Guarriello, Queer Affective Literacy: Fostering Critical Emotional Sensibilities in the Classroom (forthcoming from Information Age Publishing). Kristin's transgenre chapter addresses the unique needs of writing students with post-traumatic stress disorder and the importance of hacking and queering classroom spaces that have traditionally been retrofitted. 

Sara Austin, Kelly Moreland, and Lauren Salisbury (by proxy through Kristin Lafollette) presented "Already Seeing, Always Looking: The History of Visual Literacy and Instruction in the Long Nineteenth Century" at the Conference on College Composition & Communication. This presentation examined ways which visual instruction is always already multimodal, even in the nineteenth century.

Danielle Donelson received a Critical Language Scholarship to study Bahasa Indonesia in Malang, Indonesia for 8 weeks in the summer of 2017. She also presented on “Decolonizing Islands: Survivance and Sovereignty in Leanne Simpson's Islands of Decolonial Love” in April of 2017 at the College English Association Conference in Hilton Head, SC. This presentation offered a decolonial reading, drawing from Walter Mignolo's decolonial concepts, to better understand the themes and tropes in Leanne Simpson's book of short stories. In March she presented on “Using Decoloniality and World Englishes To Reveal Complicated English speaker Identities within an Indonesian ESOL Classroom" at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Portland, OR in March of 2017.  This presentation examined the ways in which Decolonial Theory and Indigenous Epistemologies could contribute to and further the scholarly conversations of World Englishes and the ways in which Indonesian ESOL college students negotiate their complicated identities as English speakers. In November she presented on “Kairos & Metis in the ESOL Classroom” at the 21^st Century Englishes Conference at Bowling Green State University. This presentation defined and discussed how the rhetorical concepts of kairos and metis may be used by ESOL teachers in their teaching instructions and when approaching cultural differences in the ESOL classroom. Lastly, Danielle presented at the Cultural Rhetorics conference in November 2016 in a presentation that was entitled, "An Outsider Imposing on Another's Turf: The Adaptation of a Decolonial Pedagogy by a Non-Indigenous Educator," where she explored some of the complexities of navigating through the positionality of a non-indigenous person looking to adapt a decolonial pedagogy informed by indigenous epistemologies.

In addition to publication of "Reading is Alive and Well at YSU" in the Spring/Summer OJELA, Joseph Robertshaw's presentation at the 48th Annual CEA Conference, "Adjunct Island and the New Navigational Charts" was selected for the Karen Lentz Madison Award for Scholarship which carries with it an invitation to publish that paper in the CEA Critic.

Soha Youssef received first place in the WGSS 2017 Graduate Essay Contest ($125 prize) for her academic article entitled "Sett bmit ragel “A Woman as Good as a 100 Men”: An Arab Woman’s Narratives on Discrimination in and outside Academia." The article employs personal narratives to address the issue of microaggressions that Arab women face in the American academy. Youssef proposes the use of the power of the pejorative "sett bmit ragel" to dismantle the Arab patriarchal system of oppression and to start a channel of conversations on microaggressions in academia.     

Brianna Mauk presented “More than Mobile Devices: How Embodied Practices Shape Campus Composing On-the-Go” at the Thomas R. Watson Conference and is hosting a workshop co-facilitation with Dr. Aimee Taylor titled “Different Ways to be Wise: Investigating Institutional Contexts through Multimodal Essaying” at Computers and Writing.

Caleb James, Adam Sprague, Lee Nickoson, and Soha Youssef published an article, "Whereing Identities: Teaching Writing As Community-Based Practice" in Fall/Winter 2016 The Ohio Journal of English Language Arts (OJELA). In a narrative exchange, they placed themselves in dialogue, grounded their discussion of practice in their shared writing program, and spoke back to the field of composition as a way of contributing lived reports on the status of writing and writing pedagogy.

Dr. Sue Carter Wood and her English 7230 students, Sara Austin, Kelly Moreland, Joseph Robertshaw, Lauren Salisbury, Lauren Garskie, Kristin LaFollette-Samson, Stephen Raulli, Marshal Saenz, Danielle Donelson, Stephen Ohene-Larbi, and Soha Youssef, presented “Mobility in Local History: Artifacts, Archives, and Digital Presentation” at the Thomas R. Watson Conference.

Dan Bommarito co-facilitated a workshop entitled “Career Pathways Workshop for Rhet/Comp Graduates” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Portland. He also published an article in the Journal of Writing Research entitled “Collaborative Research Writing as Mentoring in a U.S. English Doctoral Program.” The article shows how collaboration among early-stage doctoral students can support learning disciplinary practices associated with research, writing, and scholarly argument.