Teaching

Since Fall 2000, I have been putting most of my course materials online. However, only current course sites are linked below because the university course server archives courses that are not offered in the current semester.

Recent Undergraduate Courses

ENG 216, Technologies for Texts (Spring 2002, Fall 2004)

This course introduces English majors to the variety of ways computer technology is used to create, design, analyze, and disseminate texts and compares computer technologies with print and manuscript technologies. Students who major in English at a university like NC State should have the opportunity to develop particular strengths in computer applications for writing.

ENG 323, Writing in the Rhetorical Tradition (Fall 2001)

This course is designed to enrich the education of English majors and other students by helping them to become more persuasive and reflective writers. It introduces rhetoric as a conscious art with tools that can be learned and as a way of thinking about human interaction. Students gain experience writing in different forms and styles and for different audiences.

ENG 331, Communication for Engineering and Technology (Spring 2004)

The English Department offers over 20 sections of this course each semester for students in engineering and other technical disciplines. The course provides instruction and practice in the kinds of writing and speaking that these students will be expected to do in the workplace. In spring 2004, I taught this course in a computer classroom for the first time, making extensive use of online teaching materials and examples and providing an extensive course website.

ENG 491H, Honors Seminar—Problems of Authorship: Plagiarism, Ghostwriting, Collaboration (Spring 2005)

The image of the author as an isolated, inspired individual who creates and owns the text has been contested in recent literary theory and is complicated by contemporary practices. In this course, we explore three dimensions of contemporary writing practice that challenge our notions of what an author is and does: the pervasive practice of collaborative writing, the often invisible practices of ghostwriting, and the newsworthy practice of plagiarism with the associated legal doctrine of copyright. 

Recent Graduate Courses

ENG 514, History of Rhetoric (Fall 2003)

This required course for the MA in English, concentration in Rhetoric and Composition, provides a conceptually rich grounding for the study of socially significant discourse, both literary and nonliterary.  Although this course is organized historically, from the time of ancient Greece to the present, we do not study history for its own sake;  rather, we ask how history and historical change can illuminate contemporary issues and problems, including those related to instruction, to new media, to cultural change.   

ENG 515, Rhetoric of Science and Technology (Spring 2003, Spring 2007)

This is a required core course for the MS in Technical Communication. It examines assumptions underlying scientific and technical communication and introduces students to some methods for for analyzing communication situations and problems in their own fields. The overall goal is to enable students to be more reflective, critical, and strategic participants in their professional work and more aware citizens in an age of science and technology.

ENG 516, Rhetorical Criticism, Theory and Practice (Fall 2002, Fall 2004)

This course, designed primarily for students in the MA concentration in Rhetoric and Composition, examines the assumptions, achievements, and limitations of a variety of critical perspectives in contemporary rhetorical studies (for example, neo-Aristotelian, generic, metaphoric, dramatistic, narrative, feminist, ideological). Students practice applying these perspectives to a variety of discourses, including political, scientific, legal, religious, and the like, as well as to different modes of communication, including visual and material, as well as oral and written. We also consider the relationships between rhetorical criticism and literary and other forms of cultural criticism and the purposes and outcomes of criticism.

ENG 583/798, Emerging Genres: History, Technology, Social Change (Spring 2008)

This special topics course for master's and doctoral students enrolled students in rhetoric, film studies, technical communication, graphic design, and digital media. We explored how new genres emerge and evolve, how they are related to social and technological change, and how genre has become a concept of interest in multiple disciplines.

CRD 702, Rhetoric and Digital Media (Fall 2006, Fall 2008)

This core course in the doctoral program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media, is designed to test the "viability" of the rhetorical tradition in an age of new media. Communication media and conventions have always affected rhetorical theory, and the challenge of the new media is to apply, adapt, and extend rhetorical theory, or to discard it in favor of something else that will help us understand the limits and effects of symbolic interaction.

Recent Theses Directed

Scot Barnett, "A Space for Agency: Rhetorical Agency, Spatiality, and the Production of Relations in Supermodernity," spring 2005. Scot is now a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin.

Emily Fulghum, "Selling the South to Itself: Rhetoric, Mythology, and the Making of Southern Living," fall 2005.

Ashley Pinkston, "Being Cyborg, Teaching Writing: Figuring a Feminist Practice in the Computer Composition Classroom," fall 2004.

Dawn Shepherd, "Marketing Subjectivity: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Construction of the Problematic Female Television Audience," spring 2004. Dawn is teaching at Louisburg College and was my co-author on "Blogging as Social Action."

Program and Curriculum Development

Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

During 2002–04, I chaired a college Planning Committee to develop and propose an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. We submitted the formal proposal to the UNC Office of the President in May 2004 and the program was approved that November. The Planning Committee included Victoria Gallagher, Melissa Johnson, and Sarah Stein from the Department of Communication, and Chris Anson, Jason Swarts, and me from English. We also worked with a designer to launch our program website.

Professional Writing Program

The program offers three courses that fulfill General Education Requirements in Writing and Speaking for students in all majors at NC State. The Department of English offers over 40 sections of the three courses combined every semester, taught by about a dozen specialized lecturers and several tenure-track faculty members. I served as Director of this program from 1995–2002 and 2003–2004.

The three courses introduce students to the kinds of communication tasks they can expect to perform after graduation and in the workplace. Each course focuses on the forms and purposes of communication in different settings, based on where students expect to work after graduation:

• ENG 331, Communication for Engineering and Technology, focuses on  industrial, governmental, and applied research environments
• ENG 332, Communication for Business and Managment, focuses on  business and public organizations
• ENG 333, Communication for Science and Research, focuses on the scientific community

In my time as Director, I worked to raise instructor salaries, organized faculty development workshops, initiated the program listserv and the program website, and in my final year, at the request of the Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, developed the first stages of a plan to offer nearly half our course sections online through the university's Distance Education unit. I also coordinated two major collaborative research efforts, in 1996 and 2001, to gather information on the types of writing and speaking our graduates should expect to do. The most recent report, Communication in the Workplace: What Can NC State Students Expect? is available online.

M.S. in Technical Communication

I wrote the proposal for this program and served as its founding Director, from 1988 until 1995. This program was the first master of science program in the field of technical communication in the Southeast. The program provides practical experience in a variety of kinds of technical communication, from online documentation to environmental and health communication, and at the same time teaches basic conceptual and analytical approaches to the role of language in science and in corporate organizations. The program website provides additional information.

M.A. in English, Concentration in Rhetoric and Composition

This concentration offers students focused study of the teaching of writing and the role of communication in academic disciplines, civic life, and our culture at large. I worked with the department's Graduate Council in to create this option in 1984 and developed the first courses for it. Our faculty in this option has expanded to reflect many of the diverse areas of inquiry in this dynamic field of English studies. See additional information on the program website.

B.A. in English, Option in Language, Writing, and Rhetoric

Started in 1974 as an addition to the traditional B.A. in literature and language, this option allows students to focus their studies on theories of language and writing as well as on practical applications such as journalism and technical writing. Over the years, I've been involved in many program revisions, and I've helped create and revise several courses for this option. I have also served as an academic advisor to students in this program for many years.