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The Department of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale offers an M.A. and Ph.D. in English with emphasis on Rhetoric and Composition. Well aware of the role that Writing Program Administration plays in advancing literacy efforts across the university and the nation, the Rhetoric and Composition faculty now offer a program intended to prepare candidates with training and experience in directing writing programs in a variety of contexts, such as First-Year Composition, Advanced Composition, Writing Centers, and Writing Across the Curriculum. Committed to providing our students the opportunity to gain understanding and experience in conducting empirical research as the basis for understanding composition and the teaching of composition, we encourage students in our program to focus their research accordingly. Thus, we expect graduates from our program to be fully grounded in both the subject of and research on composition, the teaching of composition, and the administration of writing programs.
Curriculum
The curriculum of the program focuses on learning composition theory, research, teaching, and administration. Students must satisfy the general PhD core requirements set by the Department. Thereafter or simultaneously, students may specialize in several areas in Rhetoric and Composition. Core requirements include the following:
Additional courses offered include the following:
Recent special topics seminars have included the following:
Recent PhD Dissertations
Dennis J. Ciesielski, “Meeting at the Interface: Rhetoric, Philosophy and Postmodern Ways of Knowing” Crank, Virginia N. “What We Do When We’re (Not) Writing: An Exploration of Incubation in the Writing Process” Kathleen Ducommun, “Journal Entries: Threads of Discovery in the Writing of Published Nature/Natural History Writers" Eric R. Gardner, “Toward Ethnographic Reflexivity: Theories, Plans, and Practices of New Composition Instructors” Jocelyn Adkins Irby, “Double-Voiced Discourse: Composing Processes and African-American Students” Ming-Tzu Liao, “University Students’ Reactions to Teacher Commentary and the Relationship between the Reactions and Writing Proficiency in an EFL Setting” Rhodes, Althea E. “Finding the Ties that Bind: Initiation into Academic and Nonacademic Discourse Communities” Lance Rivers, “Composition and Science: (Dys)connections in Discourse” John Wittman, “‘Writing Ourselves into the Story’: The Promise of Literacy at the End of Metaphysics”
Recent MA Theses
Erin J. Harvey, “Creating an Industrial Climate in the Technical Writing Classroom” Monica Hatch, “Reconceiving English 290 : A Cultural Studies Approach Using Vietnam War Texts” Sarah E. Mackey, “Using Prediction and Prior Knowledge to Unite Reading and Writing in the Composition Classroom” Magdalen Mayer, “Like the Ashes We Strew into the Wind After Death: Reconsiderations of Authorship in Print and Hypertext” Jessica Reyman, “Constructions of Authorship and the Problem of Textual Ownership In Writing Groups” Erica J. Reynolds, “The Role of Self-Efficacy in Directed Self-Placement: An Analysis of Confidence, Apprehension, and Gender Components” Jennifer Swartout, “Towards a More Democratic Classroom: Exhuming Race and Conflict In Basic Writing Instruction” Abigail D. Waldron, “A Study of Kairos and Audience Regarding Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility”
Faculty
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