Tarez Samra Graban

Associate Professor
WMS 224
Histories and theories of rhetoric and composition; Global, comparative, and transnational rhetorics; Feminist rhetorical theory; Archival studies; Digital humanities; L2/multilingual intersections

TAREZ SAMRA GRABAN, Associate Professor (PhD Purdue, 2006; AB Brown, 1993), studies rhetoric as an epistemology, writing as a text technology, discourse as a form of civic participation, and alterity as a cultural apparatus. Her current manuscript, “Rhetorika Afrika,” offers a rethought notion of feminist rhetorical critique for textual scholars of the transnational archive who must read and curate their subjects in a critical space occurring somewhere between East and West. For the past several years, she has been tracing the archival presence of a select group of women in academic, governmental, and activist sectors in Namibia, Malawi, and South Africa to learn more about how they have earned various degrees of public sympathy at home and abroad, as those sympathies are tied to the democratization of information practices in their home countries. She serves on FSU's Faculty Senate Steering Committee; is Associate Chair of the CCCC Standing Group on Global & NonWestern Rhetorics; and is past president of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. From 2013 to 2020, she led the Digital Scholars / DH Reading & Discussion Group at FSU, and from 2018 to 2021 she was Director of Research and Fellowships with the Demos Project for Studies in the Data Humanities at FSU. Finally, her work continues on the Linked Women Pedagogues project, which traces the intellectual contributions of under-represented women teachers in rhetorical studies at home and abroad, from North America’s Progressive Era to the present.

Books

  • Global Rhetorical Traditions. Parlor Press, 2023. Co-edited with Hui Wu.
  • Teaching through the Archives: Text, Collaboration, Activism. Southern Illinois UP, 2022. Co-edited with Wendy Hayden.
  • Women's Irony: Rewriting Feminist Rhetorical Histories. Southern Illinois UP, 2015.
  • GenAdmin: Theorizing WPA Identities in the 21st Century. Anderson, Parlor Press, 2011. Co-authored with Colin Charlton, Jonikka Charlton, Kathleen J. Ryan, and Amy Ferdinandt Stolley.

Edited Journal Issues

  • Annotated Bibliography Co-Editor, with Anne Melfi and Nicole Khoury, "An Annotated Bibliography of Global and Non-Western Rhetorics: Sources for Comparative Rhetorical Studies." Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, vol. 9, no. 1, 2021.
  • Special Issue Co-Editor, with Paul F. Marty, Allen Romano, Micah Vandegrift, “Invisible Work in the Digital Humanities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 2, 2019.
  • Special Issue Co-Editor, with Shirley K Rose, "The Critical Place of the Networked Archive." Peitho Journal vol. 17, no. 1, Dec. 2014.

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

  • "Bringing Comparative Methodologies into the U.S.-Centric Major." Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics (ed. Keith Lloyd). Routledge: 2020, pp. 317–330. Co-authored with Meghan Velez.
  • "New Rhetorics of Scholarship: Leveraging Betweenness and Circulation for Feminist Historical Work." Rhetoric, Writing, and Circulation (eds. Laurie Gries and Collin G. Brooke). Utah State UP, 2018, pp. 189-207. Co-authored with Patricia Sullivan.
  • “Contending with ‘Difference’: Points of Leverage for Intellectual Administration of the Multilingual FYC Course.” The Internationalization of U.S. Writing Programs (eds. Shirley K Rose and Irwin Weiser). Utah State UP, 2018, pp. 97–115.
  • "Decolonising the Transnational Archive: Re/Writing Rhetorical Histories of How African Women (Can) Govern." African Journal of Rhetoric , vol. 9, no.1,Sep 2017, pp. 82-117.
  • "From Location(s) to Locatability: Mapping Feminist Recovery and Archival Activity through Metadata." College English , vol. 76, no. 2, Nov. 2013, pp. 171-193.
  • "Towards a 'Second-Generation' Suffragism: Language Politics in the Ironic Discourse of An American Suffragist." Gender and Language , vol. 5, no. 1, 2011, pp. 31–60.
  • "Theorizing Feminist Pragmatic Rhetoric as a Communicative Art for the Composition Practicum." College Composition and Communication , vol. 61, no. 1, September 2009, pp. W277-299. Co-authored with Kathleen J. Ryan.
  • "Feminine Irony and the Art of Linguistic Cooperation in Anne Askew's Sixteenth-Century Examinacyons.Rhetorica  vol. 25, no. 4, Autumn 2007, pp. 385-412.

Selected Fellowships and Awards

  • University Teaching Award, Inclusive Teaching & Mentoring (FSU, 2023)
  • Research Fellow, University of South Africa, Pretoria (2015-2018)
  • CRC Multidisciplinary Support Award (Florida State University, 2015-2017, with Richard J. Urban and Stephen J. McElroy)
  • CWPA Best Book Award for 2011-2012 (conferred 2014)
  • Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship (Indiana University, 2011-2012)
  • JAC Journal's Elizabeth A. Flynn Award (2009, with Kathleen J. Ryan)