Research Portfolio
Research Interests
- Digital Media Studies
- Literacy Studies, including Digital/Electronic/Media Literacies
- Computer-Mediated Communication and Pedagogy
- Composition History, Theory, and Practice
- Rhetorical History, Theory, and Practice, including Visual Rhetoric and Rhetoric of Technology
Dissertation
"I'm Really Not A Technology Person": Digital Media and the Discipline of English
Committee: H. Lewis Ulman (director), Scott Lloyd DeWitt, Beverly J. Moss, Kitty O. Locker
Using a mixed-methods approach, my dissertation investigates the digital literacy practices of junior faculty and PhD students working in the fields of English Studies and Writing/Composition at three universities. The project provides an analysis of how attitudes toward technology influence academic practices: teaching, doing research, evaluating work for tenure and promotion purposes, training GTAs, and sufficiently supporting and providing access to the technologies that enhance our work. More specifically, it argues that instructional support, technical support, and tenure/promotion policy in combination with the acceptance of certain metaphors for technology and for literacy encourage particular uses of technology and discourage others. My study reveals the ways in which institutional culture influences technology use and, consequently, some of the ways departments can create environments that effectively support the kinds of technologies that enhance our pedagogical, institutional, and disciplinary goals.
Projects Ongoing or in Development
Screen Literacy. A literacy project that contains research into media literacy and education, as well as an original teaching module designed to (1) introduce college students and lifelong learners to the concept of literacy as it relates to the Internet, (2) introduce college students and lifelong learners to the basic rhetorical skills needed while using the Internet, and (3) introduce college students and lifelong learners to methods of critical analysis that can be applied to web pages. Web site
