Composition Ph.D. Alumni

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Dissertation Titles and Current Positions of Ph.D. in Composition Graduates

2021

  • Scott Lasley (Composition), 'Why Are We Doing This':  How Students Find Meaning in Research Writing Across Contexts
    Lecturer, University of Wisconsin
  • Cory Chamberlain (Composition), An Improv-able Legacy: Shining The Composition Spotlight on Viola Spolin’s Improvisational Pedagogy
    Lecturer, Kennesaw State University
  • Samantha Donnelly (Composition), Composition as Bodily Rhetoric: A Multimodal Understanding of Student-Athlete Literacy Practices
    Instructor, The Founders Academy
  • Meaghan Dittrich (Composition), Toward a Rhetorical Strategy of Sass: Sheila Hibben as America’s Early 20th Century Culinary Influencer
    Director of the Connors Writing Center and of University Writing Programs, University of New Hampshire
  • Allison Giannotti (Composition), Becoming Scientists:  Undergraduate Students’ Literacy Activities in Laboratory Education
    Lecturer, Brandeis University

2020

  • Danielle Lavendier (Composition), Fat in the Academy: Reimagining the Experience of the Fat Academic
  • Lauren Short (Composition), Full Disclosure: Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition Discuss Transparency in Religious-Based Research.
    Lecturer in Professional Writing and Rhetoric and Assistant Director of the University Writing Center, Baylor University, Waco, TX

2019

  • Matt Switliksi (Composition), Common Ground: Response to Student Writing Across Contexts
    Professional Tutor, Merrimack College Writing Center, Merrimack, MA
  • Corey McCullough (Composition), Collecting a Discipline: A Pan-History of the National Archives of Composition and Rhetoric
    Assistant Professor, Fort Lewis College

2018

  • Adam Cogbill (Composition), Working Alliances: The Implications of Person-Centered Theory for Student-Teacher Relationships and Learning
    Content Strategist at Executive Office of Technology Services and Security
  • Wendy VanDellon (Composition), Revisiting the Personal Essay: Examining the Neglected Sophistication and the Rhetorical Dexterity of Student Writing
    Assistant Director at the University Tutorial Center, North Carolina State University

2017

  • Bradfield Dittrich (Composition), Edward Channing's Writing Revolution: Composition Prehistory at Harvard, 1819-1851
    Assistant Professor and Writing Program Coordinator, Southern New Hampshire University

2016

  • Sarah Franco (Composition), Liberation Through Listening: Learning from Student Veterans in Composition Classrooms
    Assistant Professor, New England Institute of Technology

2015

  • Erin Wecker (Composition), Mind the Gap: Rhetorical Bridging and Academic Literacy Among Transitional Students
    Assistant Professor and Director of Composition, University of Montana
  • Shauna Wight (Composition), "Upward Bound is College Bound": Pre-College Outreach Programs' Sponsorship of Academic Writing
    Assistant Professor, Southeast Missouri State University
  • Patricia Wilde (Composition), By Her Available Means: The Sensational Rhetoric of Women's Civil War Memoirs
    Assistant Professor, Washington State University

2014

  • Patricia Portanova (Composition), The Rhetoric of Distraction: Exploring the Impact of Portable Media Technology on the Writing Process and Product of Student Writers
    Assistant Professor, Northern Essex Community 

2013

  • Maja Wilson (Composition), Writing Assessment's "Debilatating Inheritance": Behaviorism's Dismissal of Experience
    Chair of the Division of Secondary and Special Education and Assistant Professor of Secondary Education

2012

  • Beth Kramer Simpson (Composition), Learning From Feedback: How Students Read, Interpret and Use Teacher Written Feedback in the Composition Classroom
    Assistant Professor and Director of the Bachelor's of Science in Technical Communication, New Mexico Tech
  • Michael Peterson (Composition), Created in the Image of: Mormonism and the Rhetorical Production of Identity in Privately-Published Family Histories
    Department Chair and Assistant Professor, Dixie State University
  • James Webber (Composition), Towards Public Professionalism: A Pentadic Intervention in Debate Between the Common Core Standards Initiative (CCSI) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
    Assistant Professor, University of Nevada-Reno

2011

  • Alexandria Peary (Composition), The Self-Help of Composition: Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers, Composition Studies, and the Extracurriculum
    Professor of English, Salem State University and Poet Laureate of New Hampshire

2010

  • Michael DePalma (Composition), Archiving the Sacred: Austin Phelps and the Adaptation of Nineteenth-Century Rhetorical Education at Andover Theological Seminar
    Associate Professor and Coordinator of Professional Writing and Rhetoric, Baylor University
  • Mike Garcia (Composition), Politics and Ethics of Student Self-Assessment in the Composition Classroom
    Writing Director, Luther College
  • Jeffrey Ringer (Composition), Who Do I Say I Am? Evangelical Identity and Academic Writing
    Associate Professor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Steven Simpson (Composition), Learning Systems: An Ecological Perspective on Advanced Academic Literacy Practices of Multilingual Writers
    Chair and Associate Professor of Communication, New Mexico Tech

2009

  • Joleen Hanson (Composition), Knowing More Than They Can Tell: An Assessment of Genre Awareness Among Students in Writing Intensive Zoology and Civil Engineering Courses
    Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Stout
  • Meagan Rodgers (Composition), "Racism is a Misunderstanding": Rhetorically Listening to White Students' Performances of Race
    Manager of Operations and Strategic Initiatives, Case Western Reserve University
  • Kuhio Walters (Composition), Arresting Beauty, Framing Evidence: An Inquiry into Photography and the Teaching of Writing
    Assistant Professor, West Chester University

2008

  • Alison Knoblauch (Composition), Teaching Toward Understanding: Feminist Rhetorical Theories and Pedagogies in the College Composition Classroom
    Assistant Professor, Kansas State University

2007

  • Michael Michaud (Composition), IT Managers, Construction Marketers, and Emergency Medical Technicians: Professional Adult Learners in Higher Education
    Professor, Rhode Island College
  • Kate Tirabassi (Composition), Revisiting the "Current Traditional Era": Innovations in Writing Instruction at the University of New Hampshire, 1940-1949
    Professor of English and Communications, Keene State College

2006

  • Michelle Cox (Composition), When the Workplace is on Campus: Learning to Write for a University Speech Language Clinic, 2006
    Director and Senior Lecturer of the English Language Support Office, Cornell University

2005

  • Joyce Rain Anderson (Composition), Indians and Immigrants: Survivance Stories of Literacies, 2005
    Professor of English, Bridgewater State University, Massachusetts

2004

  • Amy Zenger (Composition), Writing American Subjects: Race, Composition, and the Daily Themes Assignment for English 12 at Harvard, 1886-86
    Associate Professor of English, American University of Beirut

2003

  • Megan Fulwiler (Composition), Reading the Personal: Toward a Theory and Practice of Self in Student Writing
    Associate Professor, The College of Saint Rose, Albany

2001

  • Gregory Bowe (Composition), Taking a Pedagogical Turn: What Happens When the Student/Teacher Conference Moves to the Center of the Basic Writing Course
    Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing, Florida International University
  • Timothy Dansdill (Composition), The Composition of Anonymity: Toward a Theory, History, and Pedagogy
    Associate Professor of English, Quinnipiac College
  • Christopher Dean (Composition), Layering Literacies: Computers and Peer Response in the Twenty-first Century
    Assistant Professor of English, Southern Connecticut State University
  • Mary Hallet (Composition), Grief (W)rites: Composing Loss in the Composition Classroom
    Assistant Professor of English, Director of the Writing Program, Long Island University
  • Stephanie Paterson (Composition), Embodied Narratives: Ways of Reading Student Literacy Histories
    Associate Professor of English, Composition Director, California State University at Stanislaus

2000

  • Bronwyn T. Williams (Composition), Tuned In: Television and the Teaching of Writing
    Professor of English and Director of University Writing Center, University of Louisville

1998

  • Deborah Hodgkins (Composition), Constructive Texts: Theory, Practice and the “Self”
    Associate Professor of English, University of Maine at Presque Isle
  • Dorothy Kasik (Composition), Issues of Engendered Entitlement: Who Owns the Classroom? Who Owns Knowledge?, Tumani University, Iringa Tanzania
  • Carol Kountz (Composition), The Role of Shame in Writing: How Lived Experience Affects the Writing Process
    (retired) Associate Professor, Department of Writing, Grand Valley State University

1997

  • Stephen Barrett (Composition), This Gonna Hurt Like Hell: A Pentecostal Student Enters the Academy, Idaho State Library System
  • Anne Malone (Composition), Unruly Acts: An Inquiry into the Art of Letter Writing
    Director of Women's Studies and Associate Professor of English, Department of English & Communication, SUNY Potsdam (deceased)
  • Michelle Payne (Composition), Bodily Discourses: When Students Write about Sexual Abuse, Physicl Abuse, and Eating Disorders
    Chair, Department of English, and former Director of the Writing Program, Boise State University
  • Lance Svehla (Composition), Composition as a Mode of Being: Politics, Ethics, and History in the Writing Classrooms of Postmodernity
    Associate Professor of English, Director of Akron Writing Institute, University of Akron

1996

  • Donald Jones (Composition), Beyond the Post-Modern Impasse of Contemporary Composition: The NonFoundational Alternative of Deweyan Pragmatism
    Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Writing, University of Hartford
  • Lisa M. Stepanski (Composition), “There is No School Like the Family School:” Literacy, Motherteaching, and the Alcott Family
    Professor of English, Coordinator, First Year Seminars and Writing Program, Emmanuel College

1995

  • Bruce Ballenger (Composition), Beyond Note Cards: Rethinking the Freshman Research Paper
    Professor of English and former department Chair at Boise State University

1992

  • Xiaoming Li, (Composition)
    Professor of English, Long Island University