Program Alumni
In the past ten years, the Composition and Rhetoric program has placed over 95% of its graduates in academic positions. Graduates of the program go on to teach in tenure-track positions at a wide variety of institutions, including, for example, Northeastern University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, UMass Boston, Muhlenberg College, Miami University of Ohio, California State University Fresno, University of Southern Maine, University of North Texas, Washington State University, DePaul University, and Coastal Carolina University.
Awards
As the following selected examples illustrate, our graduates are a distinguished lot. Two have won the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC): Amy Lee, 1996, and Collie Fulford, 2011. In 2017, Jessica Ouellette won the CFSHRC President’s Dissertation Award. And two have won book awards from CCCC: Mya Poe (UMass 2005), the Advancement of Knowledge Award (2012) and Margaret Price (UMass 2004), the Outstanding Book Award (2013). Under the leadership of Emily Isaacs (UMass 1993), Montclair State University’s Writing Program was honored with the CCCC Program of Excellence Award for 2011-12. Lisa Dush (UMass 2009) won the 2016 Richard Braddock Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
More recently, Florianne Jimenez Perzan (UMass 2021) won the Rhetoric Society of America Dissertation Award and the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Society for the History of Rhetoric, and Liane Malinowski (UMass 2018) was awarded the CFSHRC's 2018 President’s Dissertation Award and received an honorable mention for the 2018 CCCC James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Dissertations
Click on name for current position; to see the dissertation, visit ScholarWorks.
2020–2022
Thomas Pickering, Ownership and Writer Agency in Web 2.0, 2022.
Andrea Griswold, The Critical Workshop: Writing, Revision, and Critical Pedagogy in the Middle-School Classroom, 2021.
Kelin Loe, When Your Time Is Someone Else's Money: Rhetorical Circulation, Affect, and Late Capitalism, 2021.
Florianne Jimenez Perzan, Echoing + Resistant Imagining: Filipino Student Writing Under American Colonial Rule, 2021.
Winner of the Rhetoric Society of America Dissertation Award and the 2021 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Society for the History of Rhetoric.
Joshua Barsczewski, Materially Queer: Identity and Agency in Academic Writing, 2020.
Jenny Krichevsky, Passing Literacies: Soviet Immigration Eldersand Intergenerational Language Practices, 2020.
Kate Litterer, Lisa Ben and Queer Rhetorical Reeducation in Post-war Los Angeles, 2020.
Rebecca Petitti, From Page to Program: A Study of Stakeholders in Multimodal First-Year Composition Curriculum and Program Design, 2020.
2010–2019
Liane Malinowski, Civic Domesticity: Rhetoric, Women and Space at Hull House, 1889-1910, 2017.
Honorable Mention for the 2018 CCCC James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Winner of the CFSHRC's 2018 President’s Dissertation Award.
Dan Ehrenfeld, Rhetorical Investments: Writing, Technology, and the Emerging Logics of the Public Sphere, 2017.
Lisha Daniels Storey, Materializing Transfer: Writing Dispositions In A Culture of Standardized Testing, 2017.
Morgan Lynn, Latinas’ Identities, Critical Literacies, and Academic Achievement in Community College, 2017.
Jessica Ouellette, Enduring Affective Rhetorics: Transnational Feminist Action in Digital Spaces, 2016.
Winner of the CFSHRC's 2017 President’s Dissertation Award.
AnnaRita Napoleone, Catch Feelings: Class Affect and Performativity in Teaching Associates’ Narratives, 2016.
Kathleen Baldwin, Multimodal Assessment in Action: What We Really Value in New Media Texts, 2016.
Jesse Priest, Sustainable Public Intellectualism: The Rhetorics of Student Scientist-Activists, 2016.
Christian Pulver, Metabolizing Capital: Writing, Information, and the Biophysical World, 2015.
Revised dissertation published as: Metabolizing Capital: Writing, Information, and the Biophysical Environment, Utah State University Press 2020.
Marni Presnall, The School Desk and the Writing Body, 2015.
Christopher DiBiase, 'The Book Can’t Teach You That’: A Case Study of Place, Writing, and Tutors’ Constructions of Writing Center Work, 2015.
John Gallagher, Interactive Audience and the Internet, 2014.
Revised dissertation published as: Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing, Utah State University Press 2019.
Emma Howes, Down from the Mountain and into the Mill: Literacy Sponsorship and Southern Appalachian Women in the New South, 2014.
Casey Burton Soto, The Role of Online Reading and Writing in the Literacy Practices of First-Year College Students. 2014.
Anne Bello, Letters to a Dictionary: Competing Views of Language in the Reception of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 2013.
Sarah Finn, Writing for Social Action: Affect, Activism, and the Composition Classroom, 2013.
Linh Dich, Technologies of Racial Formations: Asian American Online Identities, 2012.
Amber Engelson, Writing the local-global : an ethnography of friction and negotiation in an English-using Indonesian Ph.D. program, 2011.
Michelle Deal, "Whether Writers Themselves Have Been Changed": A Test of the Values Driving Writing Center Work, 2011.
Denise Paster, Practices of Value: Using a Marxist Lens to Rethink Circulation, Digital Distribution, and the Public Turn, 2010.
Sarah Stanley, The Writer and the Sentence: A Critical Grammar Pedagogy Valuing the Micro, 2010.
2000–2009
Catherine Pavia, Literacy and Religious Agency: An Ethnographic Study of an Online LDS Women's Group, 2009.
Missy Marie Montgomery, First Year Students’ Perceptions and Interpretations of Teacher Response to their Writing, 2009.
Collie Fulford, Writing across the Curriculum Program Development as Ideological and Rhetorical Practice, 2009.
Winner of the 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Lisa Dush, Digital Storytelling at an Educational Nonprofit: A Case Study and Genre-Informed Implementation Analysis, 2009.
Winner of the CCCC's Richard Braddock Award (2016).
Holly Lawrence, Personal, Reflective Writing in Business Communication and Management, 2007.
Susan Johnson, Old Words in New Orders: Multigenre Essays in the Composition Classroom, 2006.
Mike Edwards, Writing Class and Value in the Information Economy: Toward a New Understanding of Students’ Economic Activity in the Composition Classroom, 2006.
Lauren Rosenberg, Rewriting Ideologies of Literacy: A Study of Writing by Newly Literate Adults, 2006.
Revised dissertation published as: The Desire for Literacy: Writing in the Lives of Adult Learners, NCTE 2015
Co-Winner of the College English Richard C. Ohmann Award (2021).
Mya Poe, Representation, and Writing Assessment: Racial Stereotypes and the Construction of Identity in Writing Assessments, 2005.
Winner of the Advancement of Knowledge Award (2012).
Co-Winner of the CCCC's Outstanding Book Award (2014).
Jennifer DiGrazia, Reading Queer(s) in Composition: A Qualitative Study, 2005.
Heidi McKee, Deliberative Dialogue and Online Communication across Differences. 2005.
Alan Girelli, Teachers' Perceptions of a Hybrid Inservice Delivery Model: A Qualitative Study. 2004.
Margaret Price, Critical Resistance: Disability Studies in the Writing Classroom. 2004.
Winner of the CCCC's Outstanding Book Award (2013).
Winifred Wood, Electronic Deliberation and the Formation of a Public Sphere: A Situated Rhetorical Study. 2004.
Winner of the Hugh Burns award for Best Dissertation in Computers and Composition.
Michael Mattison, Between Two Classrooms: Graduate Students of Literature as Teachers of Writing. 2003.
Warren Longmire, Using Learning Objects in Critical Thinking Pedagogy and To Facilitate Entry into Discourse Communities. 2003.
Winner of the Hugh Burns award for Best Dissertation in Computers and Composition.
Kimberly Costino, Articulating Literacy: Narrative and Cultural Representations of Literacy throughout 20th Century America. 2002.
Kimberly Marcello DeVries, Teaching To Their Strengths: Multiple Interface Theory in the College Writing Class. 2002.
Susan Kirtley, Students' Views on Writing and Technology: Gender, Race, and Class. 2002.
Mary Reda, Listening to the Silences in Our Classrooms: A Study of "Quiet" Students. 2002.
Revised dissertation published as Between Speaking and Silence: A Study of Quiet Students, SUNY 2010
Julia Wagner, The Letter that Gives Life: Magic, Writing, and the Teaching of Writing. 2002.
Zan M. Goncalves, Speaking Our Truths: Literacy, Sexuality, and Social Action. 2000.
Revised dissertation published as Sexuality and the Politics of Ethos in the Writing Classroom, SIUP 2005
1991–1999
Andrea Stover, Resisting Privacy: Problems in Self-Representation in Journals and Diaries. 1999.
Tom Deans, Community-Based and Service Learning College Writing Initiatives in Relation to Composition Studies and Critical Theory. 1998.
Revised dissertation published as Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000.
Martha Trudeau Tucker, Academic Women and Writer's Block: Mapping the Terrain. 1997.
Elizabeth A. Caldwell, A Bilateral Study of the Roles of Writing in a Baccalaureate Nursing Program. 1996
Timothy Doherty, College Writing and the Resources of Theatre. 1996
Emily Isaacs, Constructing Pedagogies: A Feminist Study of Three College Writing Teachers. 1996
Under her leadership, Montclair State University’s Writing Program was honored with the CCCC Program of Excellence Award (2011-12).
Elizabeth A. Klem, Making a Given Curriculum Your Own: Three Models of Adaptation and Negotiation. 1995.
Paul LeBlanc, Reconceptualizing Text: Computers and Writing. 1990.
Revised dissertation published as Writing Teachers Writing Software. Urbana IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1995.
Amy M. Lee, Visions and Revisions of Teaching Writing as a Critical Process. 1995.
Winner of the 1996 Conference on College Composition and Communication Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Revised dissertation published: Composing Critical Pedagogies. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000.
Erika Scheurer, A Vice for Voices: Emily Dickinson's Dialogic Voice from the Borders. 1993.
Ann Mullin, See What We're Saying: An Interpretive Approach to Teaching Writing. 1991.
