Good News!
Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies Update
Hello Writers!
A lot of exciting things have been happening here at the Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies these past few months, and we want to let you know about it!
Recent Awards
Nicole Clawson
Our graduate student Nicole Clawson received a University Teaching Assistantship. As well, Nicole was awarded a travel grand by the Early Career & Professional Development Program (ECPDP) for her attendance at the Rhetoric Society of America on conference this past May.
Maureen Mathison
Professor Maureen Mathison received the Robert A. Goldberg Endowed Professor Prize Award.
Joy Pierce
Professor Joy Pierce has recently been awarded an International Travel and Research Grant. As well, we thank her for the service she has provided in her position as the College of Humanities’ Associate Dean of Academic Affairs.
Jay Jordan
Professor Jay Jordan received the College of Humanities Distinguished Faculty Service Award. As well, he has been recently elected to be a member of the University’s Credits and Admissions Committee for the next three years commencing in the 2022-23 academic year.
Nkenna Onwuzuruoha
Our graduate student Nkenna Onwuzuruoha received the Steffensen Cannon Fellowship. As well, Nkenna was one of ten previous CCCC presenter recipients of the 2022 Scholars for the Dream Travel Awards. A virtual Newcomers Coffee Hour was held in their honor.
Recent Publications and Presentations
Jenny Andrus and Nicole Clawson
Professor and First-Year Writing Director Jenny Andrus along with graduate student Nicole Clawson have placed their essay, ““We Get That”: Narrative Indexicality and the Construction of Frustration in Police Stories about Domestic Violence Victim/Survivors,” in Language in Society, the premier journal in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis.
Jonathan Stone
Professor Jonathan Stone’s book, Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of African American Folksong in the 1930s, was published last fall by University of Michigan Press, a groundbreaking contribution to the study of sonic rhetoric.
Jon was invited by his alma mater—the University of Illinois—to give a talk on his book and on sonic rhetoric studies at its annual graduate student symposium in April.
Alexandra Rain
Alexandra Rain, a former student of Nona Brown, published an article in the Salt Lake Tribune earlier this year.
Max Werner
Professor Max Werner recently held a book launch for his new book Wolves, Grizzlies, and Greenhorns: Death and Coexistence in the American West.
In addition, Max was interviewed by our own Jana Cunningham on Humanities Radio.
Jay Jordan
Professor Jay Jordan’s book Grounded Literacies in a Transnational WAC/WID Ecology: A Korean-U.S. Study has come out. This book represents the culmination of years’ worth of work and a timely contribution to translingual/second language writing studies.
Anne McMurtrey
Professor and University Writing Center Director Annie McMurtrey presented her paper, “Improved Tutor Training in the Pandemic and Beyond,” at this year’s Teaching for Learning Conference at Southern Utah University in early March, where she discussed the strengths and weaknesses of online writing tutors across the country and proposed ways to train online tutors to accommodate more students and have more successful sessions.
Christie Toth
Professor Christie Toth is the co-editor of a new open-access book released by the WAC Clearinghouse , Writing Placement in Two-Year Colleges: The Pursuit of Equity in Postsecondary Education.
Writing Placement in Two-Year Colleges brings together two-year college teacher-scholar-activists from across the U.S. to share stories, strategies, and data about local efforts at reforming writing placement assessment to advance educational access and equity. The chapters in this edited collection help faculty and writing program administrators navigate the shifting landscape of placement in the 2020s. Contributors demonstrate how two-year colleges have addressed local and state-level pressures for reform, especially at a time when the nation has been rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic with its inequitable economic, social, and physical toll.