Qualitative Research Network
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Co-Chairs
Seth Kahn, West Chester University
Heidi McKee, Miami University
1:30-1:40
WELCOME
1:40-2:40
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
“If I Knew Then What I Know Now”
Ellen Barton, Wayne State University
2:40-3:00
Break
3:00-5:00
RESEARCH ROUNDTABLES & WORKS-IN-PROGRESS PRESENTATIONS
Roundtable 1: Ethnographic Questions for Teaching, Research, & Publication
Facilitator: Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, North Carolina State University
"Imagining Ethnography"
Elizabeth Campbell, West Virginia University
"Cleanliness and Other Interruptions: Denaturalizing White Virtue"
Amanda Wray, University of Arizona
“Developing a Course in Ethnographic Writing for Undergraduates: An IRB
Enigma”
Elizabeth Allan, Oakland University
“From Dissertation to Book: How Do I Take a WAC Program Development Study
to the Next Stage?”
Collie Fulford, North Carolina Central University
Roundtable 2: Queer/ing Research & Postmodern Pedagogies
Facilitator: Will Banks, East Carolina University
“Issues of Professionalization and LGBTQ Rhetoric & Composition Scholars”
Matthew B. Cox, Michigan State University
“Inside Out: Reconstructing Queer Rhetorics of Identity Against the Academy"
Alexandra Cavallaro, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"Getting Schooled: Teaching at the Intersection of Religious Discourse and LGBTq
Issues"
Gina Patterson, Miami University
“Facilitation through Frustration: A Qualitative Case Study in Postmodern Composition
Pedagogies”
Mary Stroud, University of Arizona
Roundtable 3: Researching Literacies and Rhetoric in Non-University Communities
Facilitator: Beverly Moss, The Ohio State University
"Ethos and the Politics of Delivery: Ethnographic Research in a Religious Discourse
Community"
Kerrie Carsey, Miami University
"Embodied Histories of Literacy: Aging Identities in Digital Times"
Lauren Marshall Bowen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Differences in Action: Comparative Literacies and Participant Inquiry in Community
Literacy Research”
Katie Silvester, University of Arizona
"Literacy Promises: Teachers, Composition, and the Prison"
Patrick W. Berry
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Roundtable Four: Research on Composition Students & Instructors
Facilitator: David Seitz, Wright State University
“Interest and First-Year Composition: Student and Instructor Perspectives”
Elizabeth Imafuji, Anderson University
"Writing the First Year: Retaining Basic Writers"
Sara Webb-Sunderhaus, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
“Assessing Teacher Feedback to Students' Writing in Online Courses”
Rachel Milloy, New Mexico State University
“Under/Grad(uate) Bodies: Liminal Spaces and the Role of Graduate Student Teaching
Assistants in the Writing Classroom”
Teresa Pershing, West Virginia University
Andrea Bebell, West Virginia University
Roundtable Five: Research on Multimodal & Digital Writing
Facilitator: Kevin Roozen, Auburn University
“Tracing the Document Design of Syllabi: A Professional Writing Study of Pedagogical
Writing”
Erin Pastore, Old Dominion University
"A Survey of New Media Studies in Rhetoric and Composition"
Jennifer Haley-Brown, University of Arizona
Elise Verzosa, University of Arizona
“A Theory of Civic Rhetorics in a Digital Age”
Caroline Dadas, Miami University
"Ethics and the Future of Digitally-Mediated Writing Instruction"
Toby F. Coley, Bowling Green State University
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Roundtable Six: Researching Health, Scientific Discourse, and Identity
Facilitator: Ellen Barton
"Training Health Advocates: Teaching Rhetorical Strategies to Improve Public Health"
Jonathan Halsall, Kent State University
"College in Prison: Power, Resistance and Identity”
Laura Rogers, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
“A Matter of Perception”: Visual Rhetoric, Embodiment, and Laboratory Anatomy”
T. Kenny Fountain, Case Western Reserve University
"'I Just Absolutely Loved What I Did:' Identity Construction in the Discourse of a Disabled
Individual"
Yvonne Teems, Kent State University
Roundtable Seven: Research on Writing Pedagogy
Facilitator: Seth Kahn
"'The Next Time': Using Timed Writing and Controlled Instructor Response to Encourage
Student Engagement and Transfer of Learning"
Jo Ann Thompson, Clermont College
“Expanding A Pilot Study on Disciplinary Writing in Introductory English Studies
Coursework”
Michelle LaFrance, Drew University
“The Rhetoric of Literacy Instruction: An Interview Study”
Jim Webber, University of New Hampshire
Maja Wilson, University of New Hampshire
"Workload Distribution and Student Achievement: In Search of a Process"
Zac Wendler, Northern Illinois University
Roundtable Eight: Researching Writing Programs & Writing Centers
Facilitator: Heidi McKee
"Leaps and Worries: The Daily Work of a jWPA"
Robin Gallaher, Northwest Missouri State University
"Professionalizing Composition Instructors and Adjuncts: Data from a WritingAbout-Writing Pilot Study"
Debbie Weaver, University of Central Florida
Elizabeth Wardle, University of Central Florida
“Apples and Oranges: Conducting Assessment on a Program in Flux”
Jaime Lynn Longo, La Salle University
“Initial Interviews toward Examining the Effectiveness of Multiple Writing Center
Tutorials”
Margaret (Cortie) Ervin, West Chester University
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BIOGRAPHY OF KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Ellen Barton is a Professor in the Linguistics Program and the Composition-Rhetoric Program
in the Department of English at Wayne State University, where she is now Director of
Composition. Her research interests include research methods, research ethics, medical
communication and medical rhetoric, and, most recently, the investigation of ethics-ininteraction - the linguistic means by which ethical matters are raised, explored, negotiated,
justified, and settled (or not) in medical decision-making and IRB deliberation. Her work
appears in the journals CCC, Written Communication, the Journal of Business and Technical
Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Communication & Medicine, and
Qualitative Health Research. She won the 2009 CCCC Braddock award for her article "Further
Contributions from the Ethical Turn in Composition/Rhetoric: Analyzing Ethics in Interaction"
(CCC 39 (2008): 596-632).
BIOGRAPHIES OF CHAIRS and FACILITATORS
William P. Banks is Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Composition at East Carolina University,
where he also serves as Co-Director of the Tar River Writing Project and Director of the FirstYear Writing Studio. Will teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in writing, research, and
pedagogy. He is currently involved in a nation-wide project to determine what exposure firstyear students have to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender texts/authors/issues in first-year
composition courses. Likewise, he continues to research how adolescent gay males use
weblog technologies to develop a literacy of the “self” essential for productive rhetorical
engagement. A recent chapter related to his research on adolescent gay males, literacy, and
technology has appeared in Digital Writing Research. A special issue of Computers and
Composition he edited with Jonathan Alexander on “Sexualities, Technologies, and the
Teaching of Writing” won the Ellen Nold Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of
Computers and Writing. Other recent essays have appeared in College English and Dialogue:
A Journal for Writing Specialists.
Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater is a Professor of English and Director of the Composition and
Rhetoric Program at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, where she is also active in
the Women and Gender Studies Program. She is the author of the ethnographic study
Academic Literacies and many articles on teaching writing, conducting research, and writing
program administration. With Bonnie Sunstein, she co-authored Fieldworking: Reading and
Writing Research (three editions), a textbook for doing field-based research studies and another
book about conducting teacher research, What Works? A Practical Guide for Teacher
Research. In 2000, she received an “Imagining America” grant from the Woodrow Wilson
Foundation for a website “FieldWorking Online,” a virtual community for student and faculty
researchers. Her latest project is an ethnographic study of literacy at a day shelter for the
homeless.
Seth Kahn is Associate Professor of English at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. His
scholarship on ethnography and ethnographic pedagogy has appeared in College Composition
and Communication and Composition Studies. His next qualitative research project will focus
on connections between participatory action research and its connections to progressive
political organizing.
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Heidi McKee is Assistant Professor of English at Miami University. With Dànielle Nicole
DeVoss, she co-edited the collection Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies,
and Ethical Issues (Hampton Press, 2007). With DeVoss and Dickie Selfe, she co-edited the
collection Technological Ecologies and Sustainability (www.ccdigitalpress.org, 2009). With
James Porter she researched and wrote The Ethics of Internet Research: A Rhetorical, CaseBased Approach (Peter Lang, 2009), based on interviews with qualitative Internet researchers
from around the globe, studying in such environments as Second Life, Facebook, World of
WarCraft and numerous discussion boards and chat groups. She serves on Miami University’s
IRB and on the Ethics Committee for the Association of Internet Researchers. Her work
examining digital rhetorics, multimodal composing, technological literacies, and research ethics
and methodologies has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Community
Literacy Journal, Computers and Composition, Computers and Composition Online, and
Pedagogy.
Beverly Moss is Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University. She is the author
of numerous essays on literacy in African-American churches, the teaching of writing, and
ethnography in composition studies, including the essays “Intersections of Race and Class in
the Academy” and “Ethnography and Composition: Studying Language at Home.” She edited
the collection Literacy Across Communities. Her most recent book publication, based upon a
multi-year ethnographic study, is A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literate
Tradition in African-American Churches. Beverly’s current research is an ethnography of
literacy practices in an African American women’s service and social club. This research
extends her work examining literacy in nonacademic community sites in African American
communities.
Kevin Roozen is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Auburn University
where he teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in composition, rhetoric, and
literacy studies. His longitudinal ethnographic research explores the intersections of persons’
multiple literate engagements and the long-term implications those interplays have for the
development of literate persons and practices. Kevin’s explorations of how undergraduates
repurpose literate practices and identities across multiple sites of engagement have appeared in
Text and Talk, Kairos, the Journal of Basic Writing, and College Composition and
Communication. His current research extends this inquiry by mapping the interplays of graduate
students’ encounters with vernacular and disciplinary practices.“‘Fan fic-ing’ English Studies: A
Case Study Exploring the Interplay of Vernacular Literacies and Disciplinary Engagement," the
most recent article to emerge from Kevin’s work with graduate students, recently appeared in
Research in the Teaching of English.
David Seitz is a Professor of Composition and Rhetoric at Wright State University where he
teaches composition, creative nonfiction, rhetoric, ethnography, and literacy studies. With Julie
Lindquist, he has published Elements of Literacy (Longman/Pearson, 2008) a textbook that
makes accessible literacy research in five sites of practice: mind, culture, social class, work, and
technology. His ethnographic research, Who Can Afford Critical Consciousness?: Practicing a
Pedagogy of Humility (Hampton Press, 2004) addresses approaches to critical pedagogy with
working class and multicultural students. In addition, he has written on teaching ethnography in
undergraduate rhetoric courses, teaching the mediations of ethnographic and virtual worlds,
innovative practices for graduate teaching, and most recently on students writing parody to
analyze rhetoric (for Pedagogy in 2011).
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