Associate Professor of English, Indiana University Kokomo
My diverse research interests and background in rhetoric and composition studies have given me the tools to research and publish in a variety of academic areas, from articles on Writing across the Disciplines/Writing in the Disciplines issues and writing pedagogy to analyses of neoliberal economic rationality and academic labor.
Because I think of myself first and foremost as a writing teacher—with all the requisite hand-wringing that entails—ENG-W 131 (and its counterpart, ENG-W 132) have occupied a central place in my thinking, reflection, and teaching since my first day at IU Kokomo.
Given current events and student interest, the most recent version of the course (Spring 2017) led students through an exploration of so-called “fake news.” Students gained valuable experience in information literacy by analyzing and writing about the infamous #PizzaGate scandal, concepts such as “digital polarization” and “filter bubbles,” and even important epistemological questions such as “How do we know what we know?” and “Which sources of information can be trusted in the digital age?”
This course is a practical introduction to developing a research project in the humanities that is guided by these questions: how do researchers and scholars create knowledge? And who gets to decide what “counts” as knowledge in a given disciplinary arena?
Since its “invention” in the fifth century BCE, rhetoric—the study and practice of persuasion through language, signs, and symbols—has been a powerful force in public affairs, education, politics, and in the practice of civic life, even though today rhetoric is rarely studied outside of English and communication arts.
The genre of creative nonfiction complicates the boundaries of what we normally think of as imaginative writing (e.g., fantasy novels, contemporary short fiction, romance, most “Literature”) and writing about real people, places, things, and events (e.g., journalism/nonfiction or documentary writing).
What is the “American dream,” exactly? Is it owning your own home? Having a decent job? Choosing your own destiny? Providing a better life for your children? Ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed? Or is the American dream merely the nostalgic residue of an Empire in decline?
"To talk of New Media in the early 21st century seems odd: exhausted and exhausting. Either it seems tinged with that hopelessly naïve utopianism and dystopianism that dominated the end of the 20th century . . . or it just seems hopeless. New media is everywhere and everything; it changes more quickly than we can think. What more can we possibly say about it?” --Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, *New Media/Old Media* (2016)
Technical Editing is perhaps the most practical course I teach on a regular basis at IU Kokomo. Week by week, students learn how to edit technical documents, from proofreading for errors at the surface level to ensuring that documents contain appropriate content, organization, and visuals for their various readers.
