graduate minor in literacy
& rhetorical studies

research series

The LRS Minor Research Series promotes awareness of current scholarship about literacy and rhetoric studies by providing an opportunity for faculty and students affiliated with the LRS Minor to present their research.

past research series

spring 2008

uses of narrative: disciplines, lies and letters

• Dr. Carol Berkenkotter (Professor of Writing Studies)
  “Transdisciplining Narrative”
• Abigail Davis (Ph.D. Candidate in English)
  “Early American Lies: The Power of Literature to Distort the Historical Record”

masculine identity construction in social and literacy practices

• Dr. Timothy Lensmire ( Associate Professor of Culture and Teaching and Literacy Education)
  “Laughing White Men:  The Complex Social Production of White Racial Identity”
• Sara Berrey (Ph.D. Candidate in English)
  “‘You are very scholastic’: Spaces of Self Education in Nineteenth-Century Boys Periodicals; or, ‘Ed’ and the Ventriloquist Detective”
• Tom Friedrich (Ph.D. Candidate in Literacy Education)
  “‘This is what you need to say, even if it sounds boring’: First-year
  University Male Student Writers as Speaking Grotesque Bodies”

spring 2007

ancient greece, MIT, & the hmong diaspora

• Richard Graff (Associate Professor, Rhetoric)
  “The Styling of Prose in Classical Greece”
• Peter Kizilos-Clift (PhD Candidate, American Studies)
  “Distinguishing MIT: William Barton Rogers and the Rhetoric of Republicanism in Technology Education”
• Mitch Ogden (PhD Candidate, English)
  “Alphabetic Wars: Alphabet Primers, Competing Orthographies, and the Ideologies of Hmong Literacy”

literacy & identity

• Cynthia Lewis (Professor, Curriculum & Instruction)
  “Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power”
• Tom Friedrich (PhD Candidate, Curriculum & Instruction)
  “Male Student Writers’ Encounters with Limits: An Interview-Based, Phenomenological Study of Their Stories of Writing in High School and College”

spring 2006

• Elaine Tarone (Professor, Institute of Linguistics, English as a Second Language, and Slavic Languages and Literatures)
  “The impact of alphabetic literacy on oral language processing by learners of English as a second language.”
• Sara Berrey (PhD Candidate, English)
  “Revision in Emily Dickinson's Fascicle 36: Death, Melancholy, and the Complicit Reader”
  

spring 2005

• Richard Graff (Assistant Professor, Rhetoric)
  “Writing, Reading, and Ancient Theories of Prose Style”
• Mitch Ogden (Graduate Student, English)
  “Getting Past 1952: Investigation of Literacy Practices in the Hmong Community”
• Aaron Bruenger (PhD Candidate, English)
  “Tyrannical War and Liberating Peace: Representing Militarism in the Progressive Era”
  

fall 2004

• Edward Schiappa (Professor, Communication Studies)
  “Beyond Representational Correctness: Audience versus Expert Interpretations of Popular Culture”
• John Logie (Assistant Professor, Rhetoric)
  “‘Peers,’ ‘Pirates,’ and the Public: Rhetoric in Peer-to-Peer Debates”
• Abigail Davis (Graduate Student, English)
  “Editing The Prisoners of Niagara: Recovering an American Tom Jones”