Alumni

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We've recently reworked our lab alumni page, arranging alums by their last year in the lab rather than alphabetically.

DWRL Class of 2014

Megan Eatman is an assistant professor in the English Department at Clemson University. Her research interests include rhetorics of human rights and social justice, digital rhetoric, visual rhetoric, and historical and contemporary activist rhetorics.

Lindsey Powers Gay is a PhD candidate and an assistant director in the Department of Rhetoric & Writing at UT-Austin. She received her MA in English Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2009. She came to the English department at UT in 2011 and has since taught classes in the English and rhetoric departments, including RHE 309K: The Rhetoric of Death and Dying--a course that included class field trips to Oakwood Cemetery. While in the lab, Lindsey worked in the Machinic Invention project group and presented at the 2014 Computers and Writing conference. Her dissertation explores representations of gestation and parturition in poetry and narrative in the long eighteenth century.

Nicole Gray completed her PhD at The University of Texas in 2014. Her dissertation, Spirited Media: Revision, Race, and Revelation in Nineteenth-Century America (co-directed by Evan Carton and Michael Winship), is a study of the intersections between nineteenth-century American reform literature and print and media history. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, and Nineteenth-Century Literature. She has worked as a project manager and senior assistant editor on the online Walt Whitman Archive, and continues to work with the archive as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Laura K. Wallace is a PhD student in the Department of English. Her academic interests include twentieth- and twenty-first century U.S. fiction, reception studies and queer studies. She earned her MA at the University of Texas in 2012 and her BA at Kenyon College in 2006. In addition to teaching Gay and Lesbian Literature and Culture, she currently co-edits The Ethnic and Third World (E3W) Review of Books. While in the lab, she was part of the Excitable Media project group.

DWRL Class of 2013

Doug Coulson is an assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His research focuses primarily on forensic rhetoric, including the relationship of ethical, moral, and legal rules or principles to particular cases, the rhetoric of judgment more generally, citizenship and nationality discourse, and the history and theory of rhetoric.

Marjorie Foley, a former assistant director in the DWRL, works as a software developer and analyst for UT-Austin's Office of the Registrar.

Trevor Hoag is an assistant professor of English at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, where his research and teaching interests include rhetorical theory, digital media, and continental philosophy, particularly where these fields investigate memory and social movements. He earned his PhD in English/Rhetoric from the University of Texas at Austin (2013) and his MA in philosophy from Ohio University (2007). His book in progress, Occupying Memory: Rhetoric, Trauma, Mourning, analyzes the rhetorical production of memory as it occurs within the context of contemporary activist cultures. His work appears in Currents in Electronic Literacy and InVisible Culture.

Stephanie Odom earned her doctorate in 2013 and is currently an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Tyler. Her research interests are composition pedagogy and WAC/WID. While working for the DWRL, she benefited from the opportunity to use a networked classroom in which students could work on multimodal projects and use class time to update their electronic learning portfolios. The technological support and innovation provided by the DWRL has helped her educate UT-Tyler students and colleagues about using technology to collaborate and compose in digital spaces.

DWRL Class of 2012

Matt King is an assistant professor of rhetoric, writing, and literature at St. Bonaventure University. His DWRL work included time working on the games Rhetorical Peaks and Battle Lines. His research focuses on rhetorical theories of identification, twentieth-century/postmodern American literature and film, writing studies and pedagogy, and video games.

Seán McCarthy, a former assistant director in the DWRL, is an assistant professor in the School of Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication at James Madison University. Seán's teaching focuses on digital media, civic engagement and service learning. His research combines these areas to explore how we can create better learning and activist networks on campus and beyond.

Jillian Sayre is an Associate Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her teaching and research interests include literary theory and early national literatures in North and South America. Her current project addresses the overlapping discourses of narrative and network theory as they emerge in the structure of the novel, and in particular how digital epistemologies inform one particular leviathan: Melville's Moby Dick. In her free time she collects various beasts: a cat, two dogs, a turtle, and a baby.

Michael Widner is an Academic Technology Specialist in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University. He received his PhD from UT's Department of English in 2013. He is the co-creator and Technical Director of Bibliopedia (http://www.bibliopedia.org), a 2011 recipient of an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant. His scholarly interests include the digital humanities, cognitive science, genre, medieval studies, and representations of bodies. His hobbies include skateboarding (poorly), music, and chess. He lives in San Jose, CA with his one wife, two sons, and three cats.

DWRL Class of 2011

Katharine Beutner is the author of Alcestis and currently teaches creative writing and literature as a visiting assistant professor at The College of Wooster in Ohio. She studied fiction writing and eighteenth-century British literature at UT, where she received an MA and PhD. Her dissertation focused on antagonistic relationships between early eighteenth-century women writers as recorded in their autobiographical works.

Molly O'Hagan Hardy is the Digital Humanities Curator at The American Antiquarian Society. Her research examines debates around literary property and race in the eighteenth-century transatlantic world. She has served as the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Northeast Modern Language Association Fellow at The American Antiquarian Society. Her time as an assistant director in the DWRL broadened her understanding of the legal and cultural regimes surrounding developments in writing technology. She recently attended the Digital Humanities Summer Institute to learn TEI in an effort produce a digital edition of A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia (1794); this pamphlet was the first time that African Americans secured a copyright in the United States.

Jasmine Mulliken is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. She received her doctorate from University of Texas in May 2011. Her areas of interest include James Joyce, 20th-century British literature, and digital humanities. In addition to introductory literature and survey courses, Mulliken teaches a specialized Critical Analysis and Writing course exploring digital identity, a course she originally developed while working in the DWRL and DRW. She continues to work on several digital projects, including an interactive map of James Joyce's Dubliners, textual markup and analysis of recurring characters and phrases in all of Joyce's works, and data visualization of the "Sirens" overture and episode in Ulysses.

Noel Radley received her PhD from The University of Texas at Austin in 2013. She has worked at Santa Clara University and as a managing editor for Software Advice. During her time in the lab, Dr. Radley served as the editor of Viz.

DWRL Class of 2010

Nate Kreuter began working in the then-CWRL in 2006. He was a co-founder of Viz. and a project leader for the visual rhetoric workgroup for three years. He shared the John Slatin MEME award with Viz. colleagues in 2007 and 2008. Nate also served as an AD in the DRW from 2009 to 2010 before accepting his current position as an assistant professor of English at Western Carolina University. At WCU, Nate teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in rhetoric. More information about his work can be found at www.natekreuter.net.

Tim Turner received his PhD in English from The University of Texas at Austin in 2010 and is now an assistant professor of English at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. He has received a Presidential Excellence Postdoctoral Fellowship from The University of Texas at Austin (2010-2011) and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Writing Fellowship at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX (2011-2012). At Southwestern, Tim drew on his experiences in the DWRL to provide consulting services in writing pedagogy, including the use of instructional technology, to faculty members in many fields. His work has appeared in Across the Disciplines: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Academic Writing, Discoveries in Renaissance Culture, and Studies in English Literature.

DWRL Class of 2009

Jim Brown is an assistant professor of English and director of the Digital Studies Center at Rutgers University-Camden. He teaches courses in composition, rhetoric, and new media, and his research focuses on the ethical and rhetorical dimensions of digital technologies. Jim serves as editor of Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, and his work has been published in various journals, includingCollege Composition and Communication, Computers and Composition, Pedagogy, and O-Zone.

John Jones is an assistant professor of professional writing and editing at West Virginia University, where he teaches writing, rhetoric, and digital literacy. He was formerly a visiting assistant professor of emerging media and communication at the University of Texas at Dallas, and from 2007-2009 he was an assistant director of the DWRL. While at the DWRL, John co-founded and served as editor for Viz., a website and blog investigating the connections between rhetoric and visual culture.

DWRL Class of 2007

Vessela Valiavitcharska is an associate professor in rhetoric and writing in the English Department at the University of Maryland. Her current interests lie in the areas of classical and Byzantine rhetoric and literature, Old Slavic literature, the history of rhetoric, visual rhetoric and medieval art, the ekphrastic tradition, medieval scholia and rhetorical commentaries, rhetoric and poetics, and textual criticism. Her book, Rhetoric and Rhythm in Byzantium: The Sound of Persuasion, was published by Cambridge UP.

DWRL Class of 2006

David Barndollar (UT PhD, English, '04) worked in the lab from 1996-2006, including positions as lab developer (founding editor of Currents in Electronic Literacy), assistant director, and program coordinator. His lab courses included offerings from Rhetoric & Writing; English; and Science, Technology, & Society. He also taught and assisted in courses at UT in Plan II Honors, Government, University Extension, and the Master Teacher Summer Institute for AP English teachers. Since leaving UT, David has been teaching high-school English, presently at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia. When he is not teaching, he spends his time with his spouse, Lisa Avery (UT PhD, English, '07), and his daughters, Mallory and Rowan, and from time to time he manages to ride his bike and sing with various choral ensembles.

Bill Wolff is an associate professor of writing arts at Rowan University, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses that explore the intersections of writing and contemporary composing spaces and technologies. His recent work includes an article in Computers & Composition and a forthcoming piece in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. Bill is currently engaged in a large-scale study of fan communities on Twitter. He spends much of his time away from the computer photographing with vintage cameras and expired film, and his photos have shown in galleries in Delaware, New Jersey, and Utah. He lives in Delaware with his wife, Wendy, and son, Hydan. Find him online at williamwolff.org and @billwolff.

DWRL Class of 2005

Olin Bjork worked in the CWRL from 2000-2005. He first served as webmaster of the English Department website, then as wizard of the lab's MOO (multi-user object-oriented environment), and finally as an assistant director. He helped redesign the lab's website to meet accessibility guidelines and later to migrate it to Drupal. After leaving the lab, he collaborated on digital "audiotext" editions of John Milton's Paradise Lost (www.laits.utexas.edu/miltonpl) and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (www.laits.utexas.edu/leavesofgrass) for LAITS while completing his dissertation. In 2010, he completed a three-year postdoc at Georgia Tech and he is now a lecturer at Santa Clara University, where he teaches courses on Internet culture, technical writing, and composition. His research focuses on interface design in digital humanities and computers and writing.

Jenny Rice (PhD 2005) is an associate professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies (WRD) at the University of Kentucky. During her years in the CWRL and the DRC (as they were both previously called), Jenny was an assistant director and a lab enthusiast. She often credits the CWRL with teaching her how to become a stronger teacher—both inside and outside digital environments. She has previously served as assistant professor at Penn State University (2005-2007) and University of Missouri (2007-2011). At the University of Kentucky, she is director of composition in the newly formed WRD program. Her book Distant Publics: Development Rhetoric and the Subject of Crisis (2012), is published by University of Pittsburgh Press. Jenny has published scholarship on topics such as public rhetoric, affect, rhetorical ecologies, and new-media writing. Her work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, JAC, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Pre/Text, among other places.

DWRL Class of 1997

Daniel Anderson has been at the forefront of efforts to integrate information technologies into the teaching of writing and literature since receiving his PhD from the University of Texas in 1997. His early online courses were some of the first sites to incorporate significant student work on the Web. He has developed award-winning Web-based software for writing instruction, has published multiple books devoted to writing and literature, and is a leader in producing digital scholarly texts. His recent interests include fostering creativity and engagement in education and publishing alternative forms of scholarship. His recent projects include The PIT Journal, an undergraduate research publication developed using social media tools and crowdsourcing paradigms; Write Now, a print and online textbook for first-year writers; and "Watch the Bubble," a scholarly video memoir. He is currently professor of English and director of the Studio for Instructional Technology and English Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Joyce Locke Carter, associate professor of rhetoric and technical communication at Texas Tech University, teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in argumentation, usability research, publication management, and rhetoric and technology. Her most recent book, Market Matters: Applied Rhetoric Studies and Free Market Competition, examines market and market-like rhetorical activities. She wrote the proposal for, and currently manages, the Texas Tech PhD degree offered online. Her current research seeks to understand how experts read arguments requiring them to make decisions. As a graduate student, she was CEO of the Austin-based Daedalus Group, an educational software firm founded by herself, fellow graduate students, and faculty at UT.

Albert Rouzie has been professing rhetoric and composition at Ohio University since 1996 (promoted in '02). At UT (PhD '97), he was part of the CWRL and worked with John Slatin, Lester Faigley, and Peg Syverson. They used the Daedalus software to teach writing and used the chat module (Interchange), and also assigned hypertext, both stand-alone and for the Web. Rouzie focused on computers and writing and "serio-ludic" discourse in digital communication and composition, which led to his book At Play in the Fields of Writing: A Serio-ludic Rhetoric. He teaches ecology and writing and theories of rhetoric and composition, and is currently director of composition in charge of training new TAs in OU's first-year course and many other WPA duties.

DWRL Class of 1992

A second-generation CWRL researcher (after meeting Kemp, Carter, Taylor, and Burns at a CCTE meeting in the mid-1980s), Wayne Butler became a founding member of the Daedalus Group, Inc. His award-winning 1992 dissertation, The Construction of Knowledge in an Electronic Discourse Community, employed ethnographic methodology to explore collaborative knowledge-making in the networked classroom. He went on to teach at the University of Michigan and co-authored Writing the Information Superhighway (Allyn and Bacon, 1997) with William Condon. Today, Wayne serves as Director of Innovation, Strategic Development, and Research for UT's Continuing and Innovative Education.

DWRL Class of 1991

Paul Taylor, a founding member of the CRL (now the DWRL) in 1986, has studied computer networking and communication through both academic and business institutions. At UT, he programmed Forum, a precursor to the commercial application InterChange. He received the 1990 Graduate English Award for Teaching Excellence based on the software and teaching methods he developed in the CRL. As a member of the Texas A&M faculty from 1991-1997, he designed new courses in computers and English, and he helped create an innovative computer-based curriculum for freshman engineering students. Outside the academy, he co-founded The Daedalus Group in 1988, and he currently serves as the company's CEO.

DWRL Class of 1979

Hugh Burns (PhD, UT, 1979) completed his dissertation, entitled Stimulating Rhetorical Invention in English Composition through Computer-Assisted Instruction in 1979. From 1986–1993, Burns was among the "pioneers" who added the "R" to "CWRL." Today, Burns is the Coors Endowed Chair at the USAF Academy and an active professor emeritus of English at Texas Woman's University. A retired USAF officer, Burns has also served as a co-founder of The Daedalus Group, director of educational technology at Smith College, Fulbright Senior Specialist in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and a visiting scholar of digital media and composition at The Ohio State University. Since 1990, the Hugh Burns Dissertation Award has been given annually to the best dissertation in the field of computers and composition.