Current Students

Andrew Anastasia

email: andrewa@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD

Interests: queer theory, Tavistock group relations theory, psychodynamics, affect theory & emotion, writing studies pedagogy, qualitative research methods

Dissertation project: "Teaching Discomfort" is a sustained investigation of "discomfort" for writing studies that draws from affect, group relations, and queer theory

Related activities: past English 102 (research writing) mentor

Peter Brooks

Peter Brooks

Email: pjbrooks@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD

Interests: pedagogy and play in the composition classroom, game and cultural literacy, online identity cultivation, writing identity cultivation, feminist theory, assessment

Publications:

  • Verse Wisconsin: Writing Community Essay, Summer 2012
  • "Personal Architecture: Understanding, Improving, and Living in Your Inner House" UMR-ACUHO Newsletter Article Fall 2007 (Awarded Best ‘On The Personal Side' Article)
  • "Mentoring Dumbledore Style: Importance of Mentoring as Seen in Harry Potter" UMR-ACUHO Newsletter Article Fall 2006 (Awarded Best ‘Feature' Article)

Conference Presentations:

  • "Architects, Participants, and Rule Sets: (Re)constructing Digital Identity" Conference on College Composition and Communication, Presentation Panel: St. Louis, MO, Spring 2012
  • "The New Harlem Renaissance: Exploration of Individual & Universal Voices." Poetic Pedagogical Project, Association of Writing Programs Conference 2011: Washington, DC, Spring 2011
  • "H2o: Happiness to Others: The Poetry of Leadership" Wisconsin United Residence Hall Association Conference, Keynote Speaker/Presenter, UW Eau Claire, February 2010
  • "Who Am I: Life as a Prose Poem" Multi-Genre Expansion/Contraction Pedagogical Project,
    Association of Writing Programs Conference 2009: Chicago, Winter 2009
  • Martin Luther King Jr. "Dream Out Loud Day" Keynote Speaker/Presenter, UW Green Bay, January 2008

Teaching Experience:Intro to College Composition, Intro to English Studies, Advanced Composition, Poetry Workshop, Business Communication

Related Activities/Experience:
National Writing Project Fellow, Previous Online Writing Center Coordinator/Consultant, Prevision face to face Writing Center

Paige Conley

email: pconley@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD

Interests: visuality and rhetoric, feminist theory, composition pedagogy, public activism and social justice, early 20th-century histories of rhetoric and composition, writing program administration and the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature

Recent conference presentations:

  • " Vera Connolly's Good Housekeeping Crusade for "the Indian Cause." Panel Presentation, Conference on College Composition and Communication, St. Louis, Missouri: March 2012.
  • "The Writing Center: A Critical Isthmus for Basic Writers?" Panel Presentation, Midwest Writing Center Association Conference, Madison, Wisconsin: October 2011.
  • "'And They Had the Nerve to Wear Moccasins': the Personal and Political Rhetoric of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, 1917-1936." Panel Presentation, Native American Indian Studies Association Conference, Sacramento, CA: May 2011.
  • "Sacred Circles and Eagle Plumes Gathered Before a Great Stone Shrine: Zitkala-Ša's Dacotah Ode and the Expansive Power of Epideictic Discourse." Panel Presentation, Conference on College Composition and Communication, Atlanta, GA: April 2011.
  • "The Body Observed: Visual Culture, Identity and Marginality." Panel Presentation, Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference, Minneapolis, MN: May 2010.
  • "Reflections on Teaching, Speaking, and Writing: Freshman Composition and Public Speaking as a Learning Community." Roundtable Discussion Participant, Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference, Minneapolis, MN: May 2010.
  • "Sighting Patty/Situating Tania: American Visual Culture, Rhetorics of the Body, and Gender Unrest." Panel Presentation, Visual Culture and Global Practices Conference, California State University-Long Beach: March 2010.
  • "Remapping a Space for Rhetoric." Panel Presentation, Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Biennial Conference, East Lansing, MI: October 2009.

Publications:

BOOK CHAPTERS

Conley, Paige A. "Sighting Patty, Situating Tania: American Visual Culture, Rhetorics of the Body and Gender Unrest." Radical Women and Female Radicals. Eds. Kirsti K. Cole and Sheryl Cunningham. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, forthcoming.

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Conley, Paige A. "Review of Changing is Not Vanishing: A Collection of American Indian Poetry to 1930" in American Indian Quarterly, forthcoming.
  • Conley, Paige A. "Catesby, Audubon, and the Discovery of the New World." Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Autumn 2009. Web.

Related activities and awards:

  • First-Year Composition Program English 095 Coordinator (2010-2012)
  • Columbia University Library Scholar (2012-2013)
  • Newberry Library Short-Term NCAIS Fellowship (2012-2013)
  • Tinsley Helton Dissertation Fellowship (2012-2013).

Ash Evans

email: evans39@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD
Interests: Composition pedagogy, multimodal composition, digital/online writing, identity, Aristotelian rhetoric
Conference presentations:
  • "Blurring Social and Academic Literacies," CCCC, Las Vegas, 2013
  • "140 Characters or Bust: The Effect of Twitter on Generation Y and Formal Composition Methods," CCCC, St. Louis, 2012
  • "Imaginative Development: Multimodal Compositions From Process to Product," More Than Words Can Say: A Conference on Multimodal Composition, Wright State University, 2011
  • "Establishing Authority in the Classroom," Teaching Associate Orientation Panel, Ohio University, 2011

Teaching experience: Rhetoric and Writing, Women and Writing, Intro to College Writing

Awards: English Department's Outstanding Teaching Assistant Nominee, Ohio University, 2010-2011

Dani Hartke

email: dmhartke@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD
Interests: composition pedagogy, visuality and rhetoric, artist statements, feminist theory, second language writing, rhetoric of science
Conference presentations:
  • "Seizing Opportunities to Move from 'Say' to 'Do': The Very Real Work of Enhancing Public Sphere Literacy," North Carolina State University Symposium on Teaching Writing, Raleigh, NC., February 2013
  • "(Im)Possibility of Peerness: Graduate Student Tutors in the Writing Center," Midwest Writing Center Association Conference, Madison, October 2011.
  • "Exhibiting Writing: Crafting an Artist Statement," Ohio Art League workshop, Columbus, September 2011.
  • "City Mouse Meets Country Mouse, or How Technology Brought our Classrooms Together," Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention, Milwaukee, October 2009

Publications:

  • "Unraveling the Language Puzzle." The Wisconsin English Journal. 53.2 (2011): 93. Print.
  • "Response to 'Prattle of the Sexes.'" The Writing Lab Newsletter. 32.1 (2007): 11-13. Print. Co-authored.

Teaching experience: Introduction to College English, online (Eng101), Advanced College Writing in English as a Second Language (ESL 118)

Related activities:

  • NCTE/CEE English Methods Study research assistant(2012-current)
  • Reflective Writing project assistant (2010-2012)
  • National Writing Project teacher consultant
  • "More Than a Copycat: Using Imitation to Build Reading Comprehension." National Writing Project development series talk, Milwaukee, March 2010

Awards: Wisconsin Council Teachers of English Outstanding First Year Teacher Award, 2008-09; Graduate Chancellor's Award

Jennifer Kontny

email: jlkontny@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD
Interests: textual materiality, visual rhetoric, practice/performance theory, the politics of "error" in new media

Nicholas Learned

E-mail: learned@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD

Interests: Contemporary Rhetoric, Humor Theory, Argumentation Theory, Composition Pedagogy

Conference Presentations:

  • "What the analysis of argument can do for FYC students and the public sphere." North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing, NC: February 2013.
  • "Laughing our way through critical endeavors: How the analysis of humor offers students of First Year Composition a heuristic for critically understanding the rhetorical dimensions of discourse." CCCCs, Mo: March 2012.

Teaching experience: Eng 101, 102, 240. Living Learning Communities Pilot. Online Courses

Related activities: Eng 102 Mentor, Mentor Program Coordinator, Writing Center Tutor

Mike MacDonald

email: macdona4@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD
Interests: Literacy studies, refugee studies, post-colonial feminist theory, feminist research methods, ESL and basic writing pedagogy
Related activities: Volunteer at the Pan-African Community Association, past English 095/105 course co-coordinator

Jessica Nastal

email: jlnastal@uwm.edu
Twitter: @jlnastal
Degree: PhD

Interests: Writing Assessment, Composition Pedagogy, Translingual Writing, Working-class Studies, Postcolonial Theory

Awards: English Department Teaching Excellence Award; Graduate Chancellor's Award

Teaching Experience: 095, 101, 118, 102, 215 and courses in the Intensive English Program at UWM; Composition and ESL courses in Madrid, Spain

Conference presentations:

  • "Reframing Placement in Composition." Research Network Forum participant at CCCC. 2013.
  • "Haunted Places: Composing Possibilities for Democratic Design." Panel chairperson at CCCC. 2013.
  • "Reaching Out: Using Argument, Assessment, and Intra-Campus Collaboration to Make the Private Work of Composition Public." Panel chairperson at North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing. 2013.
  • "Bridging the Gap Between Placement, Instruction, and Writing Program Values." Panel participant at North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing. 2013.
  • "Gateways to Dissent: Wisconsin Labor Protests, Civic Engagement, and Translingual Pedagogies." Panel chairperson at CCCC. 2012.
  • "Composition as a Site of Resistance to Cultural Assimilation." Panel participant at CCCC. 2012.
  • "Constructions of Disability in the Composition Classroom." Panel participant at CCCC. 2011.
  • "‘Allowing for Inclusion': Addressing Military Students through Transformative Hospitality" presented at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's First Year Writing Symposium. 2010.
  • "I Read it on Your Wall: Facebook's Influence on First-Year Writing Students' Conception of Audience" presented at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference. 2010.
  • "Online Peer Review as Reflective Practice" presented at Marquette University Graduate
    Student Conference. 2009.
  • "Past as Present in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night" presented at Saint Louis University's Graduate Student Colloquium. 2007.
  • "‘They Perished in the Seamless Grass': Emily Dickinson's Indictment of the U.S. Civil War" presented at Saint Louis University's Graduate Student Colloquium. 2006."

Publications:

  • "Review of: Writing Assessment in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Edward M. White." Journal of Writing Assessment Reading List (2012): n. pag. Web. http://jwareadinglist.blogspot.com/2012/10/part-i-review-of-norbert-elliots-and.html
  • Nastal, Jessica and Ryan Witt. “Review of ‘Understanding Job Advertisements and Composing
    Effective Cover Letters I & II’ Presentations at CWPA 2012.” CWPA Mentor Blog (forthcoming). Web.
  • Associate Editor with the Journal of Writing Assessment. Eds. Diane Kelly-Riley and Peggy O’Neill. http://journalofwritingassessment.org/
  • "The Tyrone Family as Allegory for pre-World War Two United States of America: Illusions of an Isolationist Nation." eOneill.com. (2010). Web.
  • "Madrid." Mosaic Literary Magazine. 5 (2009). Print.
Teaching experience:
  • ENGLISH: Fundamentals of Composition (095), Introduction to College Writing (101), College Writing and Research (102), Introduction to English Studies (215), Writing with Style (230)
  • ESL: Advanced College Writing in English as a Second Language (118), College Writing and Research ESL-designated sections (102); Immersion, Writing, and Electives in UWM's Intensive English Program"

Awards:

  • University Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship
  • Graduate Chancellor's Award
  • English Department Teaching Excellence Award
  • University Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship Travel Award
  • Graduate School Travel Awards
  • English Department Travel Awards

Dissertation Project: Jessica's dissertation answers the decades-old question of how to best place students into their often-required composition courses and argues, in the vein of Brian Huot, Peggy O'Neill, and Linda Adler-Kassner, that we must reframe our public discussions to give placement the central attention it deserves in writing programs and academic institutions.

Related Activities: In 2012-13 Jessica is serving as the English Department's Coordinator for English 095.

You can find Jessica on Twitter @jlnastal, where she posts about composition, assessment, grad life, and her unfortunate fate as a Chicago sports fan

Ingrid Jayne Nordstrom

email: nordstr7@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD
Interests: Composition Pedagogy, Basic Writing Pedagogy, Literacy Theory, Writing Center Studies, University-Supported Community Writing/Literacy Centers, Public Writing, Community Studies

Conference presentation:

  • "The (Im)Possibility of Peerness: Graduate Student Tutors in the Writing Center," Midwest Writing Center Center Association Conference, 2011.

Teaching experience: Eng 095, 101, and 102 at UWM; Conversational English courses in Zhuravka, Ukraine and Nagasaki, Japan

Awards: Graduate Chancellor's Award

Related Experience: English 095 Coordinator (beginning fall 2013), National Writing Project Teacher Consultant, Peer Tutor at UWM Writing Center and UWSP Mary K. Croft Tutoring-Learning Center, Director/Workshop Leader for "Yeah, Write" Youth Creative Writing Workshop Series, Volunteer for Lincoln Hills Poetry Project

Adam M. Pacton

email: ampacton@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD
Interests: Disability Studies, Authority, Assessment, Pedagogy, Rhetorical Theory

Publications:

  • "Composing: An Ars Logica." Forthcoming in Writing on the Edge.
  • "If I Don't Know what I'm Teaching, How Can I Make the Best of It?": Rev. of Teaching What You Don't Know, by Therese Huston. Pedagogy 12.1 (2011): 187-91. Print.
  • Review of The Changing of Knowledge in Composition: Contemporary Perspectives (forthcoming in Composition Studies).
  • Review of Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence (forthcoming in Anthropology Review Database).
  • "Perusing the Parousia: A Formalist Reading of 'The Second Coming.'" Peer English 3 (2008): 75-84. Print.
  • "Bringing Socrates to the Center: the Socratic Method as Functional Peer Tutoring." Southern Discourse 12.1 (2008): 3-11. Print.
  • Review of My Word: Plagiarism and College Culture by Susan Debra Blum. Anthropology Review Database. The University of Buffalo and UBWings, 25 Nov. 2009. Web.
  • Review of Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression, ed. David Wallis. Modern Language Studies 38.1 (Summer 2008): 85-87. Print.
  • Review of Reorienting Orientalism, ed. Chandreyee Niyogi. In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism 15.2 (2008): 189-92. Print.
  • Review of Creating Our Own: Folklore, Performance, and Identity in Cuzco, Peru, by Zoila S. Mendoza. Anthropology Review Database. The University of Buffalo and UBWings, 1 Sept. 2008. Web.
  • Review of Beyond Red Power: American Indian Politics and Activism since 1900, ed. Daniel Cobb and Loretta Fowler. Anthropology Review Database. The University of Buffalo and UBWings, 31 Jan. 2008. Web.

Poetry:
"Dasein," Now and Then: The Appalachian Magazine. 25.2 (Fall/Winter 2009) Print.

Conference presentations:

  • "Asperger's Syndrome, Composition, and Self-Identification: A Model for Curricular Negotiation" (to be presented at the Society for Disability Studies Conference 2013).
  • "Out-of-Sync in All the Right Ways: Autism and the Asynchronous Writing Conference." (to be presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention 2013).
  • "CMS-Mediated Identity," presented at CCCC (St. Louis, MO, March 2012)
  • "Just Another Other: Oroonoko, 'Noble Savagery,' and Alterity," presented at the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference (Johnson City, TN, February 2010).
  • "A Cock and Bull Paper: Tristram Shandy, Self-Reflexivity, and Filming the Unfilmable," presented at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference (Portland, OR, March 2008).
  • "Peer Tutoring and the Socratic Method: the Applicability and Usefulness of Elenchus in Writing Centers," presented at the Southeastern Writing Center Association Conference (Savannah, GA, February 2008).
  • "Perusing the Parousia: A Formalist Reading of 'The Second Coming,'" the Southern Appalachian Student Conference on Literature (Johnson City, TN, November 2007).
  • "Fantasies Final and Fantasies Infinite: An Exploration of the Transactional Nature of Role-Playing Video Games," the Popular Culture Association in the South/American Culture Association in the South (Jacksonville, FL, September 2007

Teaching experience: English 095, English 101, English 101 online, English 102, English 102 online, English 102 hybrid

Awards: Distinguished Graduate Student Fellowship (2013-2014); James A. Sappenfield Fellowship; Chancellor's Graduate Student Award; UWM Graduate Student Travel Award

Related Activities: Online Composition Mentor (2012), Online Composition Coordinator (2012-2013)

Alexies Pegram-Piper

Alexis F. Pegram-Piper

Email: apegram@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD, English- Rhetoric and Composition

Academic Interests: Eco-criticism, Eco-composition, Native literature and criticism, Native writing on the Environment, Environmental Discourse, Invention as a office of Rhetoric, Eco-Feminism, Composition Pedagogy, Classical Rhetoric, and Temporality

Publications:

  • Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World Online Teaching Guide, Forthcoming, November, 2012. Contribution title: "The Significance of Identification within Rhetorical Theory and Writing on the Environment"
  • An Architect's Guide to Effective Self-Presentation, Forthcoming 2013. Contribution title: "Harnessing the Powers of Classical Rhetoric and Invention in you Self-Presentation Campaign"

 

Conference Presentations:

  • Pegram, Alexis, David Clanaugh, and Michael Lewis. Presented at the College Composition and Communication Conference, St. Louis, April 2012. "(Mis)appropriating the Strategies of the Opposition: Burke's �Selection of Means' within Anti-Environmental Rhetoric."
  • Pegram, Alexis. Presented at University of Michigan Language and Rhetoric Conference, Anne Arbor, September 2011. "The Rhetoric of the Wise Use Movement: Three Inappropriate Appeals to Pathos."
  • Pegram, Alexis. Presented at the Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies (NCAIS) Conference, Newberry Library, Chicago, July 2011. "Keeping the Sacred Fire Lit: The Re-Imagination of Memory and the Possibilities for Environmental Rhetoric within Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit."
  • Pegram, Alexis. Presented at UW Milwaukee Composition Forum, April 2011. "Moving From Rhetorical Analysis to Critical Inquiry: Using the Elements of a Rhetorical Situation to Help Students Engage with the 102 Outcomes."
  • Pegram, Alexis. Presented at Red River Graduate Student Conference, North Dakota State University, March 2011. "Presence, Performance, Tricksters, and Victims: The Pedagogical Implications of Survivance for Speakers of Marginalized Dialects in the Composition Classroom."
  • Pegram, Alexis. Presented at First-Year Composition Conference, UW Milwaukee, May 2010. "Experience as Knowledge: Using Personal Narrative to Bridge the Gap Between Interpretative and Reflective Essays."
  • Forthcoming: Pegram-Piper, Alexis. College Composition and Communication Conference, April 2013. "Environmental Issues in the Composition Classroom: A Look at Ethos and Identifications within Environmental and Anti-Environmental Groups"

Dissertation Project: Performing a Rhetorical Analysis of Invention, Temporality, and Consequent Conceptions of the Natural World within Native Texts and Non-Native Writing on the Environment with an examination of the implications for Eco-composition and Composition Pedagogy

Teaching Experience:

  • Four years of teaching English 101 and 102 at UW Milwaukee, including online instruction
  • Learning Technology Center Online Teaching Certification, UW Milwaukee, April 2012

Kristi Prins

email: kkprins@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD
Interests: composition pedagogy, craft, digital and multimodal composition, materiality, production

Publications: "Crafting New Approaches to Composition" in Composing (Media) = Composing (Embodiment): Bodies, Technologies, Writing, the Teaching of Writing. Eds. Kristin L. Arola and Anne Frances Wysocki. Utah State University Press, 2012. <http://www.usu.edu/usupress/books/index.cfm?isbn=8800>

Conference presentations:

  • "DIY Craft Practices in Composition," CCCC, 2013
  • "Developing Craft Economies of Writing," Watson Conference, 2012
  • "'So... We get to make stuff?': DIY craft, new media and production," Computers and Writing, 2012
  • "Making Our Futures by Hand: What Composition Can Learn from Craft Production," CCCC, 2012
  • "Feminist Challenges: Practicing Feminism in Digital Pedagogical Practice," Feminisms and Rhetorics, 2011
  • "Doing Digital: A Production-Focused Pedagogy," digital pedagogy poster session co-presenter, CCCC, 2011 <http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/praxis/index.php/Doing_Digital:_a_production-focused_pedagogy>
  • "Fashioning New Selves: Production, Craft and Shifting Subjectivities," CCCC, 2011
  • "Digitality and New Feminist Rhetorics (Or, Rather, Crafting New Ways of Writing)," Watson Conference, 2008
Dissertation Project: Materiality, Craft, Identity, and Embodiment: Reworking Digital Writing Pedagogy

Related activities: English 101 coordinator (2011-2013), new instructor mentor (2010-2013), Digital English project assistant (2009-2011), UWM Writing Project assistant (2008)

Awards: UWM Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship, 2013-14; UWM English Department James A. Sappenfield Fellowship, 2009

Kristin Ravel

email: kmravel@uwm.edu
Degree: PhD
Interests: Digital and multimodal composition, feminist theory, composition pedagogy, basic writing pedagogy, writing center studies, ethics

Conference presentations:
  • "Crafting Subjectivity," CCCC, 2013
  • "Considering Ethos in a Craft Economy," Watson Conference, 2012
  • "Developing a Symbiotic Relationship," ECWCA, 2009
  • "Kinesthetic Learning," ECWCA, 2008
  • "Creative Writing in the Writing Center," ECWCA, 2007
  • "Responding to Poetry at the Writing Center," MWCA, 2007

Teaching experience: ENG101, 095, 102 (including online experience); Creative Writing; Bridge Programs at Columbia College Chicago and UWM ; Community Poetry Workshops through Woodland Pattern

Awards: Chancellor's Award, Alice Gilliam Award, GETZ Scholarship, and DePaul Writing Conference Scholarship

Publications (relevant to Composition and Rhetoric): Review of "Feminist Rhetorical Resilience," edited by Elizabeth A. Flynn, Patricia Sotirin, and Anne Brady. Composition Studies, Spring 2013

Molly Ubbesen

email: mubbesen@uwm.edu
Degree: MA
Interests: Composition pedagogy, queer rhetoric and composition, queer pedagogy

Teaching experience: Current English 101 instructor; Former high school English teacher for Milwaukee Public Schools.

Awards: Chancellor’s Graduate Student Scholarship Award

Related activities: Writing Center tutor