Amanda Berardi

Email: aberardi@andrew.cmu.edu

I received my B.A. in English with a specialization in professional writing and editing from West Virginia University and my M.A. in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon. My research focuses on matters of intercultural communication and public engagement. More specifically, I question how members of multicultural communities are drawn to public spaces to address common problems and build shared knowledge through discussion.  My research interests are driven by my own academic and professional experiences working with people of various cultural and economic backgrounds. I would like my research to contribute to an increased understanding of how opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue can be facilitated and how talking across difference can result in a more inclusive discussion of public issues.

Douglas Cloud

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: dcloud@andrew.cmu.edu

My research seeks to contribute to our understanding of publics and counterpublics by studying the performance of difference, especially in the context of actually existing local publics. In particular, I am in interested in how speakers construct and manage marginalized identities in discourse. I ask, how do the norms of rational-critical debate have to be re-negotiated in the context of distinctly modern practices like identity politics? In addition, what kinds of rhetorical performances and styles do speakers and institutions rely on to not only manage marginalized identities, but also use these identities as interactional resources? Using the methodologies of discourse analysis to reveal the rhetorical dimension of practices like disclosure and narrative can tell us a great deal about how speakers meet these challenges in everyday interaction. My work as a scholar is informed by my experience as a journalist and my work with the LGBT community.

Carolyn Commer

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: ccommer@andrew.cmu.edu

My research examines the rhetoric of liberal education, specifically how the liberal arts are argued for in institutional and public policy settings. My work is informed by my own liberal arts background and seeks to understand: How do educators argue for the value of the liberal arts when economic concerns dominate institutional and public policy agendas? To answer this question, I draw from concepts in rhetorical and argument theory, such as dissociation, as well as public sphere theory, to examine the way that defenders of the liberal arts shape and circulate their discourse in different public settings. It is my hope that this research can contribute not only to our understanding of argument theory and the rhetoric of public policy, but that it also sheds light on how the study and teaching of rhetoric (itself part of the liberal arts) is argued for in higher education.

Education

B.A. Liberal Arts, The Evergreen State College, 2007

M.A. Rhetoric, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008

M.A. Liberal Arts, St. John's College, 2009

Ana Cooke

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: acooke@andrew.cmu.edu

Tim Dawson

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric

Email: jtdawson@andrew.cmu.edu

I earned degrees in English and Theater from Slippery Rock University and an M.A. in Writing from DePaul University. I teach 76-101 Interpretation and Argument, Writing in the Professions, and a Performance Studies course (with Dr. Kristina Straub) for the Humanities Scholars Program. I am interested in community literacy and deliberative democracy projects that involve university-community partnerships, and my research focuses on investigating the arts as civic engagement. In addition to my research and teaching I am the document developer for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Program for Deliberative Democracy, housed at CMU, and I help run the Unseam'd Shakespeare Company, which for sixteen years has attacked works from the classical canon with a visceral wit and no respect whatsoever. 

Daniel Dickson-LaPrade

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: ddickson@andrew.cmu.edu

I received my B.A. in Psychology and my M.A. in English, specializing in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy, from the University of Oklahoma.

I am currently studying the figures and tropes, and also the extent to which scientific creativity may be better understood through the theoretical lens of rhetorical invention. I hope to combine these interests in my dissertation, which I will begin drafting in January of 2012.

Mary Glavan

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: mglavan@andrew.cmu.edu

Eric Hanbury

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: ehanbury@andrew.cmu.edu

Derek Handley

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: dghandle@andrew.cmu.edu

I received my B.A. in English Arts from Hampton University and my M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. At CMU, my research interests revolve around African American rhetoric, rhetoric of place, and narrative theory. My research interests are rooted in making a difference in my community and discovering ways to translate theory into practice.

Jessica Harrell

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: jbharrel@andrew.cmu.edu

I received my B.A. in English from Belmont University. While working toward my B.A., I studied abroad in Florence, Italy where I developed an interest in stories about place. During my time away from academia and through the year I completed my M.A. in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon, I have pursued interests in narrative, oral history, and the discourse surrounding urban renewal. My research currently focuses on how narratives of personal experience, primarily oral histories, become a valuable resource in the construction of collective memory.

Ashley Karlin

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric

Email: akarlin@andrew.cmu.edu

Broadly, I am interested in the intersection of philosophical interpretation theory, phenomenological hermeneutics, interactive discourse, theories of engagement in language study, and discourse analysis in relation to rhetorical theory. My research currently focuses on the implicit and explicit discursive tactics that speakers employ when attempting to bridge epistemologies. At the moment, I am examining dialogues between self-described Buddhists and scientists. One example would be the recently published dialogues from the Mind and Life Institute between the Dalai Lama, physicists, and cognitive scientists. Another example is the published dialogue The Quantum and the Lotus, between genetic-biologist-turned-Buddhist-monk Matthieu Ricard and physicist Trinh Xuan Thuan. Through a micro-level discourse analysis, I aim to determine the role of identity construction, ethos, and epistemic openness in inter-epistemic dialogue. I have developed and taught syllabi for both Interpretation and Argument and Language and Culture courses. My Interpretation and Argument syllabi have covered arguments on non-violent resistance/conflict resolution and perspectives on the boundary between self and other. My Language and Culture syllabus spans the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistics, cultural anthropology, and psycholinguistics, considering such issues as the Ebonics debate in the mid-90s, American Indian language death, and cross-cultural politeness strategies as fuel for understanding and defining the relationships between language, culture, and thought.

Ari Klein

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: azk@andrew.cmu.edu

Justin Mando

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: jmando@andrew.cmu.edu

I received my B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Vermont, then took five years to teach English as a Second Language split between the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Pittsburgh. Recently, I have returned to school and received my M.A. from Carnegie Mellon in Rhetoric. For my research, I am interested in the study of rhetoric not only as a persuasive art, but a constitutive one that is integral to the formation of community identity. My research focuses on rhetorics of place, asking how and where community members achieve a "public experience." I ask, what kinds of places allow people to best interact with one another across differences in their role as citizens? How do people learn and practice citizenship? To aid in answering these questions, I have been studying the Chautauqua Movement of the late-19th century and its current incarnation, the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York.

Thomas Mitchell

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric

Email: tmitchel@andrew.cmu.edu

I am interested in discursive constructions of place, in general, and their rhetorical and material effects in relation to neighborhoods and neighborhood change, specifically. In my current research, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork to analyze residents' depictions of how recent changes (e.g., economic, demographic, cultural, linguistic) have affected a Pittsburgh neighborhood, and how this neighborhood is represented by local media. I examine the rhetorical strategies that neighborhood actors employ when they talk and write about living there, especially when they are making arguments about how and why such changes have occurred, what future changes should occur, and what constitutes (in)appropriate practices by users of particular spaces within the neighborhood. My other areas of scholarly interest include: language policy, legitimation studies, language ideologies. I hold a B.A. in English and Spanish from Emory University and and an M.A. in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon.

Meghan O'Keefe

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric

Email: mmo@andrew.cmu.edu

Will Penman

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Doug Phillips

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Broadly, my work seeks to contribute to our understanding of the ways that arguers use iconic language in public discourse. Specifically, I am interested in how people invoke whole narratives and index particular ideologies through iconic language related to decisive moments in history, and what assumptions speakers or writers make when they use language in this way. I draw on concepts from narrative theory, argument theory, and discourse analysis to examine how politicians or other public figures condense events -- or, rather, series of events -- into ‘moments' that are then picked up and recontextualized in subsequent discourses. I also seek to understand what is lost in this process. In other words, what does speaking or writing about a series of events as a moment leave out? I hold a B.A. in English from The Ohio State University and an M.A. in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon.

Ethan Pullman

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: ethanp@cmu.edu

Laura Schmidt

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric

Email: laurasch@andrew.cmu.edu

Kristin Shimmin

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: http://www.cmu.edu/hss/english/graduate/phd_lcs/phds/index.html

I am interested in the way that scientific discourse informs political discourse in the long eighteenth century. In this period, scientific practice shifts from a private, elite practice of the royal court to a more public, more democratic practice of the educated. And, these shifts in scientific practice coincide with substantial shifts in political theory toward modern notions of democratic sovereignty, and with influential political revolutions in England, America, and France. By investigating the rhetorical intersections of these changing fields, I seek to explore how emerging scientific discourse influenced emerging democratic discourse and how the eighteenth-century intersections these two discourses shaped ethics of democratic citizenship that influence our ethics today. To this end, I am specifically interested in studying rhetoric within four contexts: the early Royal Society, scientific culture in early America, eighteenth-century political theory, and eighteenth-century educational theory.

Ann Sinsheimer

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric

Email: asinshei@andrew.cmu.edu

Garrett Stack

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: gstack@andrew.cmu.edu

I received a B.A. in Journalism with an emphasis on Biology from Indiana University and a M.A. in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from San Diego State University. As a result of this varied educational background, my research interests lie in several directions. Currently, I am focusing on environmental rhetoric in all of its various forms and functions, but specifically the ways in which the media portrays humans’ relationship with environment. I hope to apply my research to forms of new media and digital communication in order to better understand how human beings publicly construct themselves in relation to the natural world that they inhabit in a society that is becoming increasingly digital and removed from nature. To me, these areas of study are important, and as environmental awareness and sustainability become increasingly exigent, so too will be the need for analysis in order to better understand our own social and environmental history, and how these ideologies have influenced and continue to affect our decisions for the future.
 

Alexis Teagarden

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: ateagard@andrew.cmu.edu

Three questions guide my research: How are publics rhetorically enacted, how are policies rhetorically constructed, and how is education rhetorically evaluated. I find these lines of inquiry intersect at charter schools—publically funded but privately run schools that are born from argument. As such arguments proliferate my research draws on both traditional rhetorical methods and computer-assisted corpus analysis. By layering these methodologies I account for both the breadth of nationally publicized discourse as well as the depth of locally situated arguments. Using these two different analytic lenses also brings into focus the dynamic exchange between the national public sphere and its many local publics, showing how arguments locally anchored and diffusely circulated can interact.

I see my research dovetailing with my teaching first-year and prof/tech writing, and a rhetorical perspective grounds my curriculum design. I am also committed to classes that foster transfer, especially of responsible writing practices and academic habits of mind.

I am an alumna of Georgetown University (B.A. in English and Government) and The Johns Hopkins University (M.A.T.) as well as the 2005 Baltimore Corps of Teach for America. I currently serve as Assistant Director for the First-Year Writing program. I am also a founding editor and occasional contributor to The Silver Tongue, a blog of rhetorical criticism for engaged citizens.         

Mark Thompson

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric

Email: mathomps@andrew.cmu.edu

I am interested in the intersections of rhetorical theory and institutional discourse, looking especially at the ways in which the asymmetric nature of institutional discourse challenges the communicative ideals of citizen participation within deliberative democracies. Currently, I am looking at Congressional testimony given by hostile witnesses and government whistleblowers, interested in the way tropes of emergency serve as a means of bypassing traditional deliberation and how such arguments are used to rhetorically justify invasive institutional practices. In addition, I look at the ways in which institutional documents are created and, when circulated past the stage of invention, represent particular interpretations upon which institutional actions are based and/or justified. It is my goal to bring this research to the classroom, informing technical communication pedagogy from both a pragmatic and ethical perspective. I hold a B.A. in English from the University of Washington, a B.S. in Public Policy from Indiana University and an M.A. in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kari Tremeryn

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric

Email: tremeryn@cmu.edu

Broadly, my research focuses on how the relationship between religion and power shows up in language. More specifically, I am interested in the role  gender plays at the intersection of narrative identity, religious legitimacy, and institutional power in the context of Roman Catholicism in the United States. In the past, I examined the way abortion functioned in the political rhetoric of American Catholic bishops and activists. Now, my emphasis has shifted to American Catholic sisters, with a particular interest in the contrasting ways that women articulate identity in texts surrounding the recent Vatican-sponsored Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious. 

I have taught Interpretation & Argument (76-101) and Writing for the Professions (76-270) at Carnegie Mellon. For the former, I designed and taught a syllabus on "Violence & Power" and another on "Religion & Power." I currently hold a B.A. in Philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio and an M.A. in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University. I am ABD.

Matthew Zebrowski

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric

Email: mgz@andrew.cmu.edu

My research focuses on the interactions between dominant discourses and more "bottom-up" alternatives—I am interested in investigating how linguistic and visual cues are deployed in ideologically loaded texts. More specifically, I am interested in how visual and verbal cues can be recontextualized and/or reappropriated, especially when discursive elements are borrowed across group boundaries. I am, therefore, also interested in how methodologies for analyzing visual/verbal communication can inform research in discourse analysis. My present work focuses on the visual/verbal aspect of food politics and production, but I have also done research on global hip-hop and the use of minority dialects in advertising. I hold a B.A. in English from Wilkes University and an M.A. in Linguistics from Temple University.