New Students - Recent Student Publications
Recent Faculty Publications

As a traditional beginning to our fall issue of Rhetoric & Writing Notes, we asked new students in the program to write something about themselves, their interests and the projects they may be working on.

Suzan Aiken
Suzan recently completed a Master of Arts in the Teaching of English at Western Michigan University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Secondary Education with Major in English and Minor in Communication. Suzan is a certified secondary teacher in the State of Michigan and taught at the middle and high school level for three and half years. A teacher consultant with the Third Coast Writing Project (Kalamazoo’s branch of the National Writing Project), Suzan is also co-director of the TCWP’s Camp for Young Writers. As part of a four-teacher team, Suzan co-wrote a grant for and co-directed the Youth Poetry Slam Workshop Series for three years in Kalamazoo. Her research interests surround technology in the classroom, teacher affect and ideology in the classroom, and postmodern education pedagogy. A giant fan of comics, Neil Gaiman, and Joss Whedon, Suzan is interested in cultural and popular media depictions of adolescent language and behavior patterns so she likes to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly.

Amira Akl
As a first generation Lebanese-American heavily influenced by the Arab community in the Toledo area and as a frequent traveler to the Middle East, Amira cannot shut up about Arab American-ness and multiculturalism. She received her BA and MA at UT, where she researched various aspects of the Arab and Arab American student populations and their integration into English classes. She joined the BGSU Rhetoric and Writing Program so she could continue her research into the rhetoric used to describe people of Arab heritage, especially in the contexts of war and terrorism. Since then, her focused interests have been completely discombobulated by new and growing interests in discussing the "othering" of Arabs in more contexts such as feminist perspectives and gender issues, race identification issues, and teaching effectively with technology. While she often spends her spare time complaining about students that complain about the amount of writing assigned in a writing class, Amira is also newly wed, so recently, she has been noticing really ugly wallpaper and really cute babies.

Emily Beard
From Huntington, West Virginia, Emily holds an MA in English emphasizing Composition and Rhetoric and BA in English (Literature), both from Marshall University. Her interests include non-traditional students, especially first generation college students, in addition to feminist and visual rhetorics and body studies. Not only a student of the university, Emily has taken ballet for over 24 years, taught and choreographed for 15 years, as well as danced in The Nutcracker ballet. In her spare time, she practices Pilates and Yoga.

Toby Coley
After earning his BA in Biblical Studies and English with a minor in the History of Ideas from Southeastern College in Wake Forest, North Carolina, Toby went on to earn his MA in English,
specializing in composition and rhetoric, from North Carolina
State University. Though Toby is currently researching the
intersections of digital mediation in the teaching of writing,
including aspects of modality, space, literacy, and rhetoric, his
reading and research interests are broad and include many aspects of theory (postmodern, rhetorical, and philosophical) and praxis (assessment, response, and curriculum development). When not reading/researching, Toby can usually be found actively pursuing his love of the outdoors and his wife (both pursuits require nurturing).

Vanessa Cozza
Vanessa earned a BA in Literature and an MA in Literary Studies from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include composition and rhetoric studies, writing center pedagogy, basic writing, multiculturalism, code-switching, critical pedagogy, memetics, and popular culture. She has taught Developmental English and Composition I & II at both Delaware County Community College for two years and at Neumann College for one year. She also has tutoring experience with both native speakers and ESL students.

Joe Erikson
Joe comes to Bowling Green from the port city of Duluth, MN, which is located on the western-most tip of Lake Superior. He holds a BA and an MA in English studies from the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he taught freshman writing for three years. In addition to his teaching at UMD, Joe recently taught two online writing courses for Axia College of the University of Phoenix, which he found both professionally rewarding and completely fascinating. Joe’s interests in rhetoric and writing partially stem from his background in information design, which involved courses in visual rhetoric, new media writing, and Web design & digital culture. While he comes to this program with an interest in many things, he particularly looks forward to studying how technology has and continues to influence the act of writing. On a more personal level, Joe is lover of books; he enjoys reading them, talking about them, collecting them, displaying them, and even cataloguing them. He is also a frequent, if not especially talented, bowler.

Christine Garbett
From Minnesota, Christine earned her MA in Teaching College English and BA in Writing from St. Cloud State University. Although the list is ever growing, her research interests include feminist rhetoric, cultural studies, disability studies, and the intersections thereof. Most of her past work has revolved around fairy tales as tools of social construction, cultural studies and feminist pedagogies, and representations of marriage and motherhood. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with friends, watching movies and television, doing various crafts, reading, and window-shopping.

Bobby Kuechenmeister
Bobby received his BA from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and his MA from Texas A&M University. His primary research interests are visual rhetoric, narrative, and popular culture with an emphasis on comic books. His secondary interests include literary theory, film, video games, document design, and usability. He is a workaholic notorious for his research on Superman and asserts that Aristotle is his buddy. However, he may geek out at any moment.

Eden Leone
Eden is from Duluth, MN where she earned a BA in psychology and sociology from the College of St. Scholastica and an MA in English Studies from the University of Minnesota Duluth. She has taught courses in freshman writing, college learning, and rhetoric of popular culture, which she enjoyed very much. Her research interests here at Bowling Green include a wide range of inquiries, but she is currently thinking about issues of electronic media in the writing classroom. For example, her current line of research questions how the shift in popular television shows from scripted comedies and dramas to unscripted reality-based shows might influence students’ notions of narrative and storytelling as they manifest themselves in college writing. Eden also enjoys reading mystery stories, shopping for shoes, and
engaging in lively conversations with her many new and old friends.

David McClure
David, born and raised in Indiana, earned his BA and MFA from
Purdue University. After working in an electronics factory and
teaching composition, technical writing, and creative writing at
Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, IN, he decided to
pursue a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing. Luckily, BGSU accepted
him. His interests include First Year Composition, Transfer,
Activity Theory, and Working Class Rhetoric. So far, he remains
stunned at the vast cultural differences between Ohio and
Indiana.