Rhetoric & Writing Notes Fall Semester

Rhetoric & Writing Notes

Occasional Notes from the BGSU Rhetoric & Writing Program

Issue 11: Spring Semester 2005

For the eleventh glorious issue of Rhetoric & Writing Notes, we asked our program’s alumni to volunteer information about themselves, their current teaching positions and previous conference appearances, publications, and awards. Quite a few people responded, and here is what they have to say, in alphabetic order.

Roxanne Cullen, currently Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of English at Ferris State University, reports the following: “My news is that I have been promoted to Asst. VP for Academic Affairs. On a rhetoric/composition note, my many years of conducting large scale writing assessment was one of the assets that was noted when I was chosen for the position since I will be overseeing the outcomes assessment on campus.”

W. Keith Duffy's second Joy Project CD has arrived! Titled "Trip to Style City," the record label describes it this way: "A remarkable 70s-tinged concept album that updates the funk, soul, and disco of the era for the cut and sample culture of the laptop age. As auteur Dr. W. Keith Duffy explains of his second album 'I remember riding around the city late on weekend nights, accompanying my mother to her various office-cleaning jobs, listening to disco-lite on the car radio. You know, Philadelphia Freedom and You Don't Have To be A Star, Baby. I didn't know how important those moments would become.'" www.bar-none.com
Keith Duffy adds: “I and my students continue to explore the rhetoricity of electronic music. I also provide them with opportunities to express themselves in multiple media--by asking them to make music in a digital recording studio and tying their musical efforts to the writing they do in the classroom. As a follow-up to the article "Digital Recording Technology in the Writing Classroom: Sampling as Citing" published by The Writing Instructor(www.writinginstructor.com), a new piece titled "A Pedagogy of Composing: The Rhetoric of Electronic Music" is under review at a new, online, SoTL (Scholarship-of-Teaching-and Learning) journal called MountainRise.
Lastly, another chapter of ye' ole' dissertation will appear in print this summer in Academic Exchange Quarterly under the title "Text Appropriation: Spirituality and Pedagogy." I think I've just about drained the dissertation dry. It's time to start dreaming up new pieces, I guess.
In September, I enter my fourth-year tenure-review at Penn State. Fingers crossed.”

Carolyn Keefe, currently at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, Kentucky, writes the following: “My only news of note is that I've been elected to another term as Faculty Representative to President's Cabinet. In this position I attend two President's Cabinet Retreats a year, attend monthly President's Cabinet meetings, and participate in annual faculty contract negotiations. The person who serves as Faculty Rep is automatically a member of the Faculty Affairs Council, another very active group. I'm also a member of the Academic Effectiveness Council and the Athletics Committee. Given my 4-4 teaching schedule and my English Program and Humanities Division obligations, I'm kept quite busy.”

Barbara Little Liu, Assistant Professor of English and Coordinator of First-Year Writing at Eastern Connecticut State University, sent us the following: “I got tenured this past year, and I have chapters in two new collections from Utah State University Press: "More than the Latest PC Buzzword for Modes: What Genre Theory Means to Composition" in The Outcomes Book: Debate and Consensus after the WPA Outcomes Statement and "The Idea of a Writing Center Meets the Reality of Classroom-Based Tutoring" co-authored with a former student, Holly Mandes, in On Location: Theory and Practice in Classroom-Based Writing Tutoring.”

Randall McClure (2001) continues to be active in the field. Currently, he is serving on the organizing committee for the annual conference for the Great Plains Alliance for Computers and Writing (http://www.departments.dsu.edu/gpacw/). Randall has also helped or chaired the planning committees for the past two conferences on composition for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system. In planning MnSCU's 2005 conference on writing, Randall is working with former BG rhetoric and writing grads Xuewei Wu (Century College) and Mike Morgan (Bemidji State University). Randall is an assistant professor and Director of the Teaching Assistants program in the English Department at Minnesota State University.

Lynnette Porter submitted the following: Unsung Heroes of The Lord of the Rings: From the Page to the Screen, will be published in March 2005 by Greenwood Press/Praeger. This is her fifth book, but her first literary and film criticism. She is a member of The Tolkien Society and this summer will present a paper at the Society’s conference in Birmingham, England, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings. While in England and Scotland, she plans to collect more information for a chapter in development for a future book about Tolkien’s works.
Other recent Tolkien-related papers include “The Hero Concept in Peter Jackson’s Adaptation of The Lord of the Rings,” which was presented before the Popular Culture Association in the South in September 2004, in New Orleans, LA, and “Changing Characterizations in Art: Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn,” which was given during the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s Annual Conference, in April 2004, in San Antonio, TX.
Additional papers and books in the development stages concern the TV series, Lost. A continuing interest in popular culture has prompted some recent publishing interests about films, literature, and television.
In July last year, Lynnette presented a paper entitled “Improving Bulletin Board Use in Face-to-Face Classes,” which was also published in the Australasian Computers in Education Conference Proceedings CD. The conference was held in Adelaide, SA, Australia. While “in the neighborhood,” she visited friends in New Zealand and toured former filming locations for Lord of the Rings throughout South Island.
Although Lynnette (associate professor, Humanities and Social Sciences Department, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL) teaches courses like senior thesis, technical writing, and Honors literature and technical writing, she frequently is invited to speak in other types of courses. This semester, for example, she has spoken on international communication issues for a cross-cultural communication course; Southwestern U.S. aboriginal cultures for students in a cultural appreciation course; Zuni, Hopi, and Navajo artifacts in a cultural anthropology course; and Maori history and the film Whale Rider as part of a Women’s History Month celebration. She continues to write and present information about a wide range of personal and professional interests.
Highlights in her career include being selected as a Fellow in the Society of Technical Communication, publishing five books, being tenured at two universities, and traveling internationally to present conference presentations. She has given more than 150 presentations at regional, national, and international conferences dealing with topics ranging from technical communication to composition to popular culture to aboriginal studies.
Personally, Lynette’s just happy to have survived three hurricanes last fall and still continues to live in Florida, although New Zealand is looking better all the time!

Christine Tulley (Sauer '01) is a fourth year Assistant Professor of English at The University of Findlay. Forthcoming publications include "Snapshots of Complexity" for JAC and “Cybergrrl Negotiations”, an essay in _Notes from Underground: Essays on American Youth Subcultures by Scholars and Students_ (Longman Press, 2005). Christine is also completing postdoctoral work in film studies at The University of Michigan, and will receive a graduate certificate of Film and Video studies this spring.

Xuewei Wu tells us the following: “This is my eleventh year teaching at Century Community and Technical College, since September 1994. For every semester, I normally teach three composition classes (Freshman Comp. and Research Paper Writing) and one literature class. I am very happy that I can use all the knowledge and skills which BGSU prepared me well for. In the last three years, I have been elected Chair of the English Department. We have 43 instructors in the English Department (23 are full-time and 20 are part- time). I still teach three comp. classes (one class is reassigned) while doing the administrative work as the Department Chair. Our college belongs to the MNSCU system (Minnesota State Colleges and Universities), so I have the chance to meet other BGSU R&W graduates at various conferences and annual discipline meetings. Randall McClure, a former BGSU graduate and now the Director of Writing Programs at Minnesota State University at Mankato, has invited me and Michael on the planning committee for the Third Annual MnSCU Conference on Writing in fall 2005. I would like to know more about other R&W Program graduates in other institutions and their work and their publications about the teaching of writing.

If you didn’t get a news item to Rhetoric & Writing Notes in time for this issue, why not send one in soon anyway.. The faculty always likes to know how things are going with our alumni, and in a few months another issue of the newsletter will be coming out.
I hope all of you manage to have great summer, with at least some relaxation blended into whatever else you do. [RG]

Rhetoric & Writing Notes is an occasional web-based newsletter of the Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program at Bowling Green State University. Alumni news and ideas for future stories should be sent to the Program Director, Richard Gebhardt, at richgeb@bgnet.bgsu.edu (or at the English Department, BGSU, Bowling Green, OH 43403). For previous issues or for information about the Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program, visit www.bgsu.edu/departments/english/rcweb/rchome.htm . The Spring Semester issue was compiled and edited by Justin Felix, the 2004-05 Program Assistant for the Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program.