Current Students

I research how games function--or don't--as learning tools. My dissertation examines rhetorics of game design, technical communication, scrum project management, and the development of a set of design principles for educational game design.

Cassandra is the Associate Director of the University Writing Center at the University of Louisville. Her research interests intersect writing centers, writing program administration, graduate student enculturation, and feminist methodologies.

My research focuses on feminist rhetorical scholarship, gender studies, masculinity, and military rhetorics. I am completing my dissertation on the rhetorical practices of women in special forces military communities. Other current research projects include the visual rhetoric of disabled veterans, early 20th century Navy spouse conduct manuals, and the 19th century writings of the Woodhull and Claflin sisters.

Amy is a part-time PhD student concentrating on rhetoric and media studies, while also working as a full time assistant professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College. Her foremost research interest includes the intersection of ESL language speakers in the college composition classroom and how to best help these students succeed at college writing tasks.

Dana’s research interests include the evolution of the print industry, specifically during the Victorian era and with particular interest in raw materials and editorship. She hopes to create digital projects to enhance her research in these areas. Dana is also invested in feminist rhetoric, nostalgia, and "fandom" and fan communities.

My research focuses on the need for placement reform at community colleges. I am interested in the unique constraints of a mid-size community college and how one-size-fits-all commercial assessments can be detrimental to certain student subgroups.

A part-time PhD student focused on discourse and cultural studies while teaching FYC at a variety of institutions, my research interests focus on how women’s online discursive agency is impacted by gendered silencing behaviors. In short, I read the comments, which I do not recommend to anyone else.

My PhD emphasis is in rhetoric, writing, and discourse studies with a secondary emphasis in college writing pedagogy. My dissertation research focuses on using rhetorical frame analysis to examine social movement discourse. Other research interests include college writing pedagogy, transfer theory in writing studies, and social movement rhetorics.

I study the activity of digital algorithms as rhetorical. My dissertation traces rhetorical agency among assemblages of human and nonhuman entities that emerge during algorithmic activities like online search toward proposing algorithmic literacy.

Angela currently works as an English Instructor at Livingstone College where she teaches Freshman Composition and Victorian Literature. Her research interests include first-year composition, pedagogy, oral histories, archives, and feminist methodologies.

Sarah is the Writing Program Administrator at a private K-12 school in Chattanooga, TN. Her research interests lie at the intersection of rhet/comp and pedagogy with a narrower focus on dual enrollment composition and identity constructs.

D’An is examining the epistemological and ontological rhetorical issues that arise between aesthetics and authenticity in immersive simulation environments. As a communications and digital design professional and instructor, she is primarily focused on visual rhetoric, new media, virtual rhetoric, and material-semiotic networks.

Megan McKittrick is a PhD candidate, working at the nexus of game studies and technical communication, specifically risk communication. Her dissertation examines the way serious games communicate environmental risk. She is a lecturer in the Department of English at Old Dominion University, teaching composition, technical, scientific, and digital writing.

I research the representation of material identities in literature and culture, focusing on deviance and gender in Victorian novels, comic books, and cosplay spaces.

Megan Mize is the ePortfolio Training and Support Coordinator for The Center for High Impact Practices (CHIP) at ODU. Her dissertation, Constructing an Early Modern Queen: Gender, Authority, and the Rhetoric of Identity, explores the intersection of gender and pedagogical histories which lead to the use of mimicry as a rhetorical strategy for marginalized figures during the sixteenth century.

Alex is a full-time PhD student at Old Dominion University. His research interests include the rhetoricity of online course management systems, the role of digitality in student agency, and the nature of disclosure and transparency in liberatory pedagogy.

My research interests include: travel narratives; post-colonialism; refugee studies; and geopolitics. I plan to work with asylum seekers for my dissertation, as I study how their narratives are composed, valued and commodified.

I am a PhD candidate and a full time faculty member at Craven Community College. My dissertation examines paratextual and narratorial interventions in "illicit" nineteenth-century British texts. My research interests include narrative theory, gender and sexuality studies, neo-Victorianism, and British and American nineteenth-century literature and periodicals.

My research focuses on critical language awareness as an equitable stance towards language in the writing classroom. Also, I support writing instructors by facilitating professional development opportunities on critical language awareness pedagogy.