Community

A vital component to the FSU Rhetoric and Composition program is our sense of community. We build a community by fostering an environment where regular socials, bi-weekly prelim and post-prelim support groups, writing workshops, and daily interaction among professors and students are the norm.

 

Reading Groups:

The Rhet/Comp program holds a bi-weekly reading group each semester that provides a forum for open-ended discussions of a single topic that we explore throughout semester together.

 

Prelim Prep and Post-Prelim Prep:

As a way to support PhD students as they prepare for their preliminary exams and to assist them as they write their dissertations and prepare for the job market, the Rhet/Comp program holds informal bi-weekly meetings led by faculty.

 

Rhet/Comp Pedagogy Course

The English Department provides courses to prepare graduate students for teaching upper-level undergraduate courses including Writing and Editing in Print and Online and Rhetoric. After successfully completing this course in the Fall of 2011, R/C grads began teaching ENC3021, the Rhetoric course component for the EMW program for the first time since EWM's inception.

 

Rhet/Comp Office Space

At the start of the 2008 academic year, the Rhet/Comp program moved to its own suite of spaces. Located in the heart of the Williams English Building, and adjacent to the First-Year Composition program, the Writing Center, and the Digital Studio, the Rhet/Comp Office has become a central location for faculty and students to gather. Home to professors' offices, the program assistant, a Rhet/Comp library, and a community space, this suite provides space for both casual conversation and collaborative projects.

 

Visiting Speaker Series

An important component of our program is the Rhetoric and Composition Visiting Speakers Series. Over the past few years, we have enjoyed visits from scholars of digital literacy, rhetoric and composition communities. While visiting FSU, speakers are taken to lunch by graduate students and interviewed by a team of graduate students. In addition, they present a talk to the department and engage with students at a faculty member's home.

Speakers from 2011-2012 include:

Linda Flower, Professor of Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University (transcript forthcoming)

Jacqueline Jones Royster, Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Ivan Allen Jr. Dean's Chair in Liberal Arts and Technology, and Professor of English in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Gunther Kress, Professor of Semiotics and Education at the Institute of Education, University of London

Speakers from 2009-2010 include:

Lynèe Lewis Gaillet, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Georgia State University. (Transcript available)

Charles Bazerman, Professor of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Chair of CCCC "Writing Research: What does it add up to? Where is it heading? What is visibly missing? What is invisible? Who has the eyes to see it?" (Transcript available)

Meg Morgan (Transcript available)

Shirley Wilson Logan, Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at the University of Maryland "Free Floating Literacies, Then and Now" (Transcript available)

Speakers from 2008-2009 include:

Donald Leu, John and Maria Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology at the University of Connecticut

Charles Schuster, Associate Dean for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Deborah Brandt, Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Wisconsin Madison

Beverly Moss, Associate Professor of English at the Ohio State University (Transcript available)

Speakers from 2006-2008 include:

Doug Hesse, Professor of English at the University of Denver and past CCCC's chair "The Leeward Lay of Essayistic Literacy-'By a Friend of the Late Elia'" (Transcript available)

Lester Faigley, Professor of English at the University of Texas and past CCCC's chair "Writing, Design, and the Nature of Order" (Transcript available)

Amy Devitt, Professor of English at University of Kansas "Between Stability and Flexibility: How Genres Change" (Transcript available)

David Holmes, Professor of English at Pepperdine University "Recasting the Kingdom, Reclaiming the Word: Race, Religion and the Democratic Paradoxes of African American Rhetorical Sovereignty" (Transcript available)

David Blakesley, Associate Professor of English at Purdue University "Teaching and Composing Visually"

Anne Wysocki, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee "The Tastes of Production"

Kathrine Hayles, Professor of English at UCLA Presentation on electronic textuality, especially the logic of electronic literature and its aesthetics

Todd Taylor, Professor of English at the University of North Carolina Presentation on multi-media in the composition classroom and accompanying workshop.

Richard Fulkerson, Professor of English at the University of North Texas Presentation on the state of composition today

Cheryl Glenn, Professor of English at Penn State and past CCCC's chair Presentation on feminist rhetoric

 

Some Current Activities

Faculty/Graduate Student Collaborations:

Katherine Bridgman and Stephen McElroy, in collaboration with Michael Neal and Paul Fyfe of the History of Text Technology program are currently in the process of creating a digital archive of postcards. They will be presenting on their procedures in a presentation entitled "Postcards and Their Archives: Creating and Curating a Digital Archive" for the Center of Everyday Writing. In addition, Katie, Stephen, and Dr. Neal have a proposal on the subject of digital archives accepted for review with Kairos entitled "Meaning-Making at the Intersections: Developing a Digital Archive for Multimodal Research."

Josh Mehler and Kristie Fleckenstein have submitted an abstract entitled "Mobility Regimes and the Constitution of the Nineteenth-Century (Post)Human Body" for an edited anthology Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman.

Elizabeth Powers, Stephen McElroy, and Kathi Yancey have submitted a chapter investigating e-portfolios titled "Composing, Networks, and Electronic Portfolios: Notes toward a Theory of Assessing ePortfolios" for a collection Digital Writing Assessment and Evaluation. Their chapter is currently under review.

Matt Davis, Dr. Fleckenstein, and Dr. Yancey have a essay tentatively slated for publication in May 2013 with Utah State University Press titled "A Matter of Design: Context and Available Resources in the Development of a New English Major at Florida State University" for a collection Undergraduate Writing Majors: Nineteen Program Profiles.

Leigh Graziano, Jennifer O'Malley, and Rory Lee are working with Dr. Yancey on a collaborative chapter on electronic portfolios and reflection for a multidisciplinary edited collection titled Reflection and Metacognition in College Teaching.

Liane Robertson and Kara Taczak, together with Dr. Yancey, have a forthcoming monograph with Utah State University Press titled The "Things They Carried": Transfer, Composition, and Cultures of Writing. It is slated for publication in 2012.