Rhetoric & Writing at BGSU

New Students - Recent Student Scholarship - Recent Faculty Publications 

NSF Updates - Dissertation Defenses - Conference Representation

In this issue, we introduce the new students in the program, recognize continuing faculty and student scholarship, and update our growing list of students awards and events.

Rhetoric & Writing Students Recognized for University Awards

The Rhetoric & Writing Program continues to demonstrate its excellence in the university with a strong showing from its students. This April, University awards ceremonies recognized the following students for their outstanding contributions to graduate work:

Outstanding Graduate Student: Erin Dietel-McLaughlin, Rhetoric and Writing

Outstanding International Graduate Student: Ruijie Zhao, Rhetoric and Writing

Shanklin Awards for Research Excellence:

    Top Prize: Heather Pristash, Rhetoric and Writing
    First Runner Up: Ruijie Zhao, Rhetoric and Writing

Katzner Bookstore Award:

    Spring 2008: Erin Dietel-McLaughlin, Rhetoric and Writing
    Fall 2007: Elizabeth Fleitz, Rhetoric and Writing

Non-Service Fellowship (NSF) Awards (Rhetoric and Writing):

    Elizabeth Fleitz
    Robert Graves

Third Fridays Kick Off with Strong Support.

Our first 3rd Friday event of the year started with a strong showing from students and faculty alike.  3rd Fridays begin at 11:30am in East 206, so there are always those unable to attend due to teaching and research constraints.  Topics for the first meeting included first-year introductions, professional development funding, and ended with a question and answer session involving all the participants.  We look forward to continued support and excellent topics throughout the semester.

Faculty Updates and Achievements (also on the department blog)

Kris Blair co-edited a book collection with Radhika Gajjala and Christine Tulley entitled Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action (Hampton Press Series New Dimensions in Computers and Composition Studies, 2008). In addition, Kris, along with graduate student collaborators, was awarded a $10,000 Community Action Grant from the National American Association of University Women for the Digital Mirror Computer Camp for Girls, an engagement project designed to develop and sustain adolescent girls’ interest in computer technologies.

Richard Gebhardt’s Fall 2007 faculty improvement leave project (”Rhetoric and Composition Scholarship in an Era of Engagement”) led to papers at two refereed national meetings, the 4 C’s in April 2008 (”Composition Scholarship and the Scholarship of Engagement”) and the Rhetoric Society of America in May 2008 (”Scholarship of Engagement: New Name for or Challenge to the Work of Rhetoric”), and a revision of the RSA paper has been accepted for the conference proceedings, a refereed book titled The Responsibilities of Rhetoric.

Lance Massey has a book review forthcoming in Composition Studies, of Networked Process:  Dissolving Boundaries of Process and Post-Process, by Helen Foster.  A book contract has been secured from Utah State UP for the book Lance is editing along with Rick Gebhardt, Revisiting The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Perspectives on an Evolving Field.

Lee Nickoson-Massey co-authored the article “Remediating Knowledge-Making Spaces in the Graduate Curriculum: Developing and Sustaining Multimodal Teaching and Research” along with Meredith Graupner and Kristine Blair in the forthcoming Computers & Composition Special Issue, “The Future of Graduate Education in the New University.”   Lee also has a forthcoming review, “Practical But Not Simple: Edward M. White’s Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guide” in Pedagogy 9.2 (Spring 2009).

Sue Carter Wood spent two weeks in July with Global Volunteers in Kunming, China. The program is hosted by Kunming Teachers Training Institute. Sue, along with her husband Rob, met daily with 12 middle and secondary school teachers from all over Yunnan province, China’s southernmost and most ethnically diverse province.

Bruce Edwards was the invited inauguration speaker at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya this past month. His address was entitled “Global Professions in Higher Education.” Bruce also consulted with Daystar to help them launch a new major in Web-mediated Communication in their Department of Language and Literature. His article “Patches of Godlight: C. S. Lewis as Imaginative Writer” was published in Literature and Belief (27.1).