Job Placement
Since our program’s inception, our Ph.D. students have long been successful job candidates. Our traditionally small cohorts have a high placement rate at a variety of colleges and universities, and we are proud of our record in placing Composition & Rhetoric alumni in full-time positions as tenure-track faculty, visiting faculty, and academic staff. Below is a list, sorted by graduation year, of our doctoral alumni, their current departmental affiliation, and the title of their dissertation. For a complete list of all alumni affiliations, you can a complete PDF list here.
Composition & Rhetoric
Alumni
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2019
Antonio Tang, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dissertation: The Nation, the Group, the Individual: Towards an Embodied
Rhetorical History of Early 20th Century Chinese University
Students in America
Antonio Byrd, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Dissertation: In Pursuit of Uncommon Literacies: African American Adults’
Experience in a Code Bootcamp
Brandee Easter, York University (Canada)
Dissertation: Weird Code: Gender and Programming Languages
Elisa Findlay, St. Mary’s College of California
Dissertation: When Writers Aren’t Authors: Workplace Literacies in the Age
of Mass Writing
Matthew Fledderjohann, La Moyne College
Dissertation: When Writers Encounter Dissonance
Neil Simpkins, University of Washington-Bothell
Dissertation: On Being Accommodated: The Rhetorical Tactics of Disabled
College Writers
Kathleen Daly Weisse, Marist College
Dissertation: Votes, Genes, Grades: Deconstructing Big Data’s Rhetorical
Reach
2018
Rachel Carrales, Madison College
Dissertation: The New Domesticity: How Social Movements Sponsor the
Literacy Practices of Twenty-First Century Mothers
Maggie Bertucci Hamper, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville
Dissertation: How Basic Writing Does (and Doesn’t) Matter for Working Class
College Students’ Success
Annika Konrad, Dartmouth College
Dissertation: Arguing for Access: Everyday Rhetorical Labor of Disability
Stephanie Larson, Carnegie Mellon University
Dissertation: How to Discipline a Woman’s Body: Sensation, Rape Culture, and
U.S. Publics
2017
Anna Floch Arcello, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Dissertation: ‘Love in Action’: The Transformative Role of Emotion in Writing
and Learning Contexts
Leigh Elion, Emory University
Dissertation: Visualizing Changing Communities: Gentrification and the
Rhetoric of Public Art in 21st-Century San Francisco
Kim Moreland, University of North Texas
Dissertation: Authorship: Intention and Responsibility in Networks
2016
Ruben Casas, University of Washington-Tacoma
Dissertation: In/visibility, Mobility, and Making Do in Contemporary Latina/o
Immigrant Rhetorics
Chris Earle, University of Nevada-Reno
Dissertation: Dead Words: Constrained Agency and Prisoners’ Rhetorical Care
of the Self
David Hudson
Dissertation: Unsettling Service: Rhetorical Education in the Chicago
Settlement House Movement, 1890-1968
Elisabeth Miller, University of Nevada-Reno
Dissertation: Writing after Aphasia: Toward an Embodied Theory of Literacy
Adedoyin Ogunfeyimi, Dartmouth College
Dissertation: Manifest Ethos: The Making of a Hospitable Ecology
Christopher Syrnyk, Oregon Institute of Technology
Dissertation: On Behalf of Others: Rhetoric as an Act of Recognition and the
Rhetorical Problems of Voiceless Others
Sharon Yam, University of Kentucky
Dissertation: Locust, Ah Cha, and Bun Mui: Affect, Emotion, and Transnational
Citizenship in Hong Kong
2015
Michael Dimmick, University of Houston-Downtown
Dissertation: Embodied Placemaking as a Rhetoric of Citizenship on Johns Island, South Carolina
Nancy Reddy, Stockton University
Dissertation: Re-Entangling Literacy: A Historical Study of Extracurricular Writing Practices
Becca Tarsa, Trinity College
Dissertation: Casual Affinities
Anne Wheeler, Springfield College
Dissertation: Contested Impressions: Visual Remembering of Japanese American Incarceration
Stephanie White, University of Waterloo
Dissertation: “I Stopped Writing for Myself”: Student Perspectives on Service-Learning in Composition
2014
Timothy Johnson, University of Louisville
Dissertation: Making the Invisible Hand Visible: Ford Motor Company, Industrial Film, and the Rise of Economic-Organizational Rhetoric
Peter Mayshle, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Dissertation: Walled “Memoria”: Presencing Memory Sites in Intramuros, Manila
Chrissy Stephenson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dissertation: What They Set Before Themselves: Civic Learning, Cocurricular Rhetorical Engagement, and the Undergraduate Protopublic
2013
Melvin Hall, Georgetown University
Dissertation: Words, Substance, War: The Rhetorical Constitution of Iraq’s Combined Security Mechanism
Antonia Massa-McLeod, University of Central Arkansas
Dissertation: Creating Ecotopia: Sustainability Discourse and Dissent in the American Public Sphere
2012
Cydney Alexis, Rowan University
Dissertation: Why Things Matter to Writing: A Material Perspective on Literacy and Selfhood
James Daniel, University of Texas-Tyler
Dissertation: Agent and Event: Rhetorical Dissent in the Context of Globalization
Melanie Hoftyzer, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dissertation: Narrative, Ethos, and Artificial Fluoridation: The ‘Storying’ of a Public Health Policy
Rebecca Lorimer, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Dissertation: Traveling Literacies: Writing Among Languages and Locations
Dave Stock, Brigham Young University
Dissertation: The Distribution of Rhetorical Education at a Public Midwest University, 1874-1927
2011
Maria Bibbs, Memphis College of Art
Dissertation: The African American literacy myth: Literacy’s ethical objective during the Progressive Era, 1890-1919
Beth Godbee, Marquette University
Dissertation: Small talk, big change: Identifying potentials for social change in one-with-one talk about writing
Jacque Preston, Utah Valley University
Dissertation: The fertile commonplace: Collective persuasions, interpretive acts, and dialectical spaces
Karen Redfield, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dissertation: Inside the circle, outside the circle: The survivance of American Indian storytelling and the development of rhetorical strategies in English
2010
Scot Barnett, Indiana University
Dissertation: Arts of concealment rhetoric and ethics in the age of wireless computing
Rik Hunter, Quest University, British Columbia
Dissertation: A hypersocial-interactive model of Wiki-mediated writing: Collaborative writing in a fan & gamer community
Tim Laquintano, Lafayette College
Dissertation: Sustained Authorship: Digital Writing, Self-Publishing, and the Ebook
Annette Vee, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation: Proceduracy: Computer Code Writing in the Continuum of Literacy
Kate Vieira, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dissertation: Fragmented assimilation: How literacy unites and divides two Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities
2009
Matthew Capdevielle, University of Notre Dame
Dissertation: Reading the “writing wars”: Narrative, history, and conflict in the re-formation of post-secondary writing curricula
Rasha Diab, University of Texas-Austin
Dissertation: Rhetorical in(ter)vention and the dialectic of conflict and conflict resolution: Sulh and Sadat’s peacemaking rhetoric
Mary Fiorenza, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dissertation: Methods and models of writing and living: Composing Brenda Ueland’s writing life
Mira Shimabukuro, Highline Community College
Dissertation: Relocating authority: Japanese Americans writing to redress mass incarceration
2008
Corey Mead, Baruch College, CUNY
Dissertation: Less painful than reading books: The military, literacy, and videogames
Adam Koehler, Manhattan College
Dissertation: A sound form of knowledge: Composition and the rhetorical problem of music
Eric Pritchard, University of Texas-Austin
Dissertation: “A litany for survival”: Black Queer Literacies
2007
David Grant, University of Northern Iowa
Dissertation: Toward sustainable literacies: An empirical study of journal writing in an ecocomposition course
2006
Alice Daer (Robison), Arizona State University
Dissertation: Inventing fun: Videogame design as a writing process
Rhea Lathan, Florida State University
Dissertation: Writing a wrong: A case of African American adult literacy action on the South Carolina Sea Islands, 1957—1962
Jennifer Griffith, Renaissance Vision Development Group
Dissertation: Writing ethics: Person, proximity, and responsibility in a first-year composition classroom
Shifra Sharlin, Graduate Center, CUNY
Dissertation: Provincialism, metropolitanism, and the politics of space: Malevich in Vitebsk
2005 & Before
Fayez Al-Ghamdi (2004), King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
Dissertation: The rhetoric of cultural encounter in Arab American autobiography
Deborah Alvarez (1998), University of Delaware
Dissertation: Four adolescents, their compensatory strategies and writing development in the texts they authored in and out of school
Carl Battaglia (2001), University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Dissertation: The role of visualization in creative and academic writing
Julie Nelson Christoph (2002), University of Puget Sound
Dissertation: Arguing with one’s life: Strategies of placement in pioneer women’s writing on westward expansion
John M. Duffy (2000), University of Notre Dame
Dissertation: Writing from these roots: Literacy, rhetoric, and history in a Hmong-American community
Eli Goldblatt (1990), Temple University
Dissertation: Authority and social context: Case stories of three inner-city high school writers
Nelson Graff (2000), San Francisco State University
Dissertation: Identity in disciplinary writing and learning
Mary Juzwik (2003), Michigan State University
Dissertation: Towards a rhetoric of teaching: An investigation of teaching as performance in a middle-level Holocaust unit
Stephanie Kerschbaum (2005), University of Delaware
Dissertation: Beyond simple inclusion: Towards engagement with difference in a postsecondary writing classroom
Jerry Mirskin (1992), Ithaca College
Dissertation: Writing as a process of valuing
Rebecca Schoenike Nowacek (2001), Marquette University
Dissertation: Writing instruction in the interdisciplinary classroom: Histories, challenges, possibilities
Mary Lou Odom (2004), Kennesaw State University
Dissertation: Before the classroom: Teachers theorizing first-year composition pedagogy
Kevin Porter (2002), University of Texas-Arlington
Dissertation: Meaning and time: Toward a consequentialist philosophy of discourse in composition and rhetoric studies and beyond
Catherine Prendergast (1997), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dissertation: Generic monsters: Writing that transgresses disciplinary boundaries
Bonnie Smith (2003), Belmont University
Dissertation: The common reader writes back: Literacy for life-change
Bryan Trabold (2003), Suffolk University
Dissertation: Writing space, power, and strategies of resistance in apartheid South Africa: The story of the “Weekly Mail” and “New Nation”
Jeffrey Wiemelt (1995), Southeastern Louisiana University
Dissertation: Negotiating the interactional contexts of an intermediate-level college writing classroom: Text-based,interactionist contributions to a sociocognitive conception of student writing