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Mary Lay Schuster on Material Rhetoric and Midwifery

Submitted by Clancy on 13 October 2004 - 11:34pm

I've been meaning to blog this for weeks. I recently attended a thought-provoking talk given by my adviser, Mary Lay Schuster, in the monthly "Rhetoric Parlor" series of colloquia we have in our department, titled "A Different Place to Birth: A Material Rhetorical Analysis of BabyHaven, a Free-Standing Baby Center." Schuster has been doing research on midwifery for years now. She has done analyses of the legal status of midwifery practices after Roe v. Wade and insightful Foucaultian/feminist critiques of the tension between the knowledge systems of the medical establishment and midwifery, which, according to cultural norms, is situated as an alternative knowledge system placing more authority in "embodied knowledge." I'll be quick to point out, however, as Schuster would, that there's always overlap and a degree of cooperation between the two systems (for example, some physicians supply midwives with pitocin and other materials on the sly). Her most recent work, on which this talk was based, centers on material rhetoric as an analytical tool for analyzing spaces, in this case a birthing center. In spring 2003, she taught a seminar on gender and the rhetoric of science and technology, in which we read a lot about material rhetoric and the body, including Rhetorical Bodies, a collection of essays edited by Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley, and Feminism and the Body, a collection of essays edited by Londa Schiebinger, both of which I'd highly recommend if you're at all interested in this stuff. These texts, particularly the former, which contains Carole Blair's essay, "Contemporary US Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric's Materiality," inform her work.

Schuster started out by defining key terms. She explained the difference between direct-entry midwives and nurse-midwives. Direct-entry midwives are not formally schooled but do apprenticeships under other midwives, whereas nurse-midwives work under the supervision of physicians. She also cited a definition of material rhetoric from Barbara Dixon's essay in Rhetorical Bodies material rhetoric is a space where "multiple discourses and multiple material practices collude and collide." She invoked Blair's five-question theoretical framework for studying material sites as rhetoric:

What is the significance of the text’s material existence?

What are the apparatuses and degrees of durability displayed by the text?

What are the text’s modes or possibilities of reproduction or preservation?

What does the text do to (or with, or against) other texts?

How does the text act on people?” (p. 23)

Other assumptions that guided her thinking included the study of mind and body in relation and the assumption that cultural norms mediate the body and the ways the self experiences the body. We experience cultural inscriptions and natural sensations simultaneously. To further describe her thinking, she reviewed two models of birth with their own particular sets of norms: the medical model, in which birth is managed and the laboring body is perceived as "risky" and in need of control in the form of objects such as fetal heart monitors and procedures such as epidurals, and the midwifery model, in which labor and birth are not so pathologized, and medical objects are hidden from view (at least in the case of BabyHaven), except the oxygen tank, which is too large to hide. Simply put, the medical model often assumes something will go wrong, and the midwifery model assumes that nothing will go wrong but are prepared for medical emergencies should they arise.

Schuster provided excerpts from the interviews she had done with women who had given birth at the birthing center, and while there's no way I can do her presentation justice, I'll point to a few of Schuster's key interpretations. She articulated the problem of balancing her observations with those of her participants. As a result, her interpretation of the space was influenced by her participants' accounts of their experiences in the space. One pattern she noticed was "materializing privacy." The physical space of the center (the text, according to Blair's framework), acts on people by helping to create the perception of privacy. The positive experience of privacy, created by the homelike decor, locking of doors during a birth, and closing of curtains, enabled the women to relax and better cope with pain. One tangible benefit of the material rhetoric of BabyHaven is that the women don't require drugs to cope with pain. Specific objects at the center, such as the large tub of water in the room and the birthing ball, also enhanced the women's experience of birth. The tub made women feel in control and helped them avoid pushing too soon. To use Blair's term, BabyHaven, considered as a text, has several consequences, including contributing to the resistance of the medical hegemonic norm that the laboring body is in need of control. BabyHaven rewrites cultural assumptions about where the laboring body can be safe; Schuster makes this point in reference to the tub, which physicians rarely allow laboring women to use because of the perceived risk of infection or, it could be argued, the perceived jeopardy of the laboring body and fetus. Finally, BabyHaven helps to create a positive experience of privacy in which women can bond with babies differently and more easily. It was an excellent presentation, and Schuster will be publishing an article based on this study soon. When it comes out, I'll post the citation here.

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Prelims Are Up

Submitted by Clancy on 3 October 2004 - 3:43pm

I finally finished coding my prelims into HTML, so they're available if you want to look at them. I confess, I haven't been in a big rush to do it. I don't think I've recovered from them yet; I'm not ready to look back on the whole experience and laugh, that's for sure.

The Unfolding of the Discourse

Submitted by Clancy on 3 October 2004 - 12:40pm

A couple of friends and I are putting together a panel on technology and new models of authorship and intellectual property for Computers and Writing 2005. The deadline is October 28, but one person on the panel emailed us suggesting we get started with the panel and added, "I know Clancy likes to get started early." :D This is my reputation now? All because I'm paranoid that my proposals for CCCC won't get accepted, so I always try to goad people into getting a draft ready by the coaching deadline? Okay, I guess I do like to get an early start. Here's the nascent idea -- a feminist analysis of weblog authorship -- which has been floating around in my mind off-and-on for a few months now. Because of said nascence, I'll do much meandering before I get to the point, if I even have one yet.

In "Rhetoric, feminism, and the politics of textual ownership," Andrea Lunsford critiques the solitary, originary, proprietary model of authorship and warns readers of the implications of the appropriation of authorship by corporate entities such as Disney and Microsoft (for a preliminary exploration of these ideas, see her 1997 keynote at Feminisms and Rhetorics). The article first appeared in College English in 1999, and much of it is a review of debates within postmodern theory about authorship and recent changes in U.S. copyright legislation. Postmodern/poststructuralist and feminist theorists, most notably Barthes and Foucault, have de-reified the Authorial Genius, showing him to be an historical construction and yielding two significant insights:

Authors do not exist outside a social and historical context; social and material conditions enable and constrain authorship. "Men of letters" are, historically speaking, usually men, usually white, and usually economically privileged enough to afford the leisure time it takes to write.
A text is not the product of a sole author. As Barthes writes, "a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation." The act of composition is exposed as a weaving together of other texts the writer has read and voices he or she has heard in conversation.

Lunsford juxtaposes these theoretical claims with large-scale efforts on the part of corporations to assume the role of author and hyperprotect content, e.g. Mickey Mouse and the Windows source code, and she rightly insists that in practice, the author is alive and well, so well that fair use (including for educational purposes) and the sharing of knowledge are threatened. This review is intended as a wake-up call for scholars in rhetoric and composition; five years ago, these issues were not discussed as often as they are now. (I'd still argue that intellectual property debates aren't as high a priority as they should be on the discipline's scholarly agenda; what do others think? Colleagues sometimes say to me, "I still don't understand why I should care about intellectual property." How can the stakes be better communicated? Does one have to have a direct encounter with "permission culture" before he or she fully understands?)

Books you'd write if you had time

Submitted by Clancy on 18 September 2004 - 8:53am

What book(s) would you write if you weren't so busy doing your scholarship, teaching, and the 150 million other things you have to do every day? Here's one I've been turning over in my mind for about three years now. Maybe someone else will write it; I hope so. This requires some background, so bear with me.

In a couple of weeks, I will be thirty years old. :O I grew up in the 70s and 80s and, because I have excellent parents who read to me for as long as I wanted them to, every single day, running their index fingers along the words as they spoke them,

(not like that LeapFrog "magic wand" that the kids can use to point to a word and hear a recorded voice speak it -- every time I see those LeapPads in the toy aisles of Target or Wal-Mart, I get depressed...it doesn't compare to the intellectual stimulation of having a human being point to the word and say it to the child. I know it's so hard to find the time to read to children as much as both parents and children want, and I don't intend to make any parents feel bad; I only want to point out that I was very lucky to have enormous amounts of time -- and money, what with all the book clubs my parents joined: it seemed that every day, new books arrived in the mail -- invested in my development)

I learned to read before I turned three. After that, my parents had to pull the books out of my hands when they wanted me to pay attention to some non-book-related thing. "Stop reading and eat," they'd scold. I far preferred books to toys, and I read everything. Now, when I bring up childhood reading experiences with women my age, we talk about characters in those 70s and 80s books, like Nancy Drew, Bess, George, Elizabeth Wakefield, Jessica Wakefield, Lila Fowler, Enid Rollins, Bruce Patman, Todd Wilkins, Ramona Quimby, Beezus Quimby, Laura Ingalls Wilder and her sisters Mary and Carrie, Caitlin Ryan, the Girls of Canby Hall, Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace of A Wrinkle in Time, Ned of Jelly Belly, Tony of Then Again, Maybe I Won't, Linda Fischer of Blubber, and Margaret of Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, as though they were old friends. We felt these characters, knew them intimately. They inspired us. We looked at how they handled the situations we found ourselves in, listened to their interpretations of such experiences as first kisses, menarche, getting bullied or standing there doing nothing when someone we liked was getting bullied because we were too afraid to take up for our friend, and we knew we weren't alone in our self-doubt and awkwardness. When I say "we," of course, I mean white, middle-class girls; it speaks volumes that the only book I remember reading about a working-class African-American family was Striped Ice Cream.

I'd love to interview a bunch of women of all races and classes, to record their memories of these characters and what kinds of effects (constructive? alienating?) they had on these women, and then write a book about to what extent and how these books have shaped femininity in my generation.

Portal

Submitted by Clancy on 2 September 2004 - 6:56pm

How ought we to understand the concept of rhetorical agency?

Do we have a “rhetorical tradition”? Are we better advised to think of traditions rather than a single tradition? If we do recognize a tradition or several traditions, how do we identify and characterize it (or them)?

What should be the institutional and social goals for academic rhetoric in the twenty-first century? How can rhetoric best contribute to the social, political, and cultural environment that extends beyond the University?

What does it mean to teach rhetoric? What does it mean to teach composition and performance seriously? What is the relationship between rhetoric and composition? Should they be distinguished?

My Amazon Wish List

1 comment

Str-r-r-u-u-u-u-u-u-ggling...

Submitted by Clancy on 14 August 2004 - 6:40pm

Am I going to make it?

On Friday morning, I got my last two preliminary exam questions, and my answers are due Monday morning. The first essay is basically done, but I still have some work to do on it. I plan to mobilize for the second essay late tonight, get up in the morning, and write all day, yet again. I want to do anything but this right now. Things I'd rather do include:

Knit
Watch Farscape
Go to my friend Brooke's show tonight at First Ave.
Work on my syllabus for this fall's class
Oh yeah, did I happen to mention, anything but these prelims?

I know, I know, this will be over soon and I'll look back and laugh.

Performativity: Draft of 3W Encyclopedia Entry

Submitted by Clancy on 9 August 2004 - 1:29pm

Feminism

Explain performativity to a high school / undergraduate / general public audience, and do it within a 750-word limit. It's harder than it sounds, I'll tell you what! I tried to pack everything in: a definition and history of performativity, critiques of it, and political strategies stemming from it. I'm sure I mucked it up real good. :o

PERFORMATIVITY. Performativity is the idea that gender is a daily, habitual, learned act based on cultural norms of femininity and masculinity. The idea comes from the work of Judith Butler, who was influenced by theorists who studied “speech acts,” or the power of authoritative words to both say and do at the same time. One example is, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” According to Butler, gender works in much the same way. As girls, many of us learn countless subtle ways to groom and arrange our bodies to be feminine and attain approval as “normal” in a culture that puts people into one category: man or woman. For example, girls internalize stereotypically feminine acts such as wearing dresses and makeup, shaving one’s underarms and legs, sitting with legs crossed, and playing with dolls (which, it could be argued depending on the kind of play, is a preparation for the adult woman's traditional gender role of raising children). Women and men continually “cite” these gender norms in their day-to-day behavior, usually without realizing it. Even the simple act of filling out a form and circling the “Mr.” prefix is a performance of gender. Most often, gender is among the first things one notices about another person, and that is not so much a result of biological differences as it is a result of these stylizations of the body and habits of mind supplied by cultural norms. Such norms are oppressive because a person’s social legitimacy and normalcy is dependent on conforming to one of the two genders.

CV

Submitted by Clancy on 8 August 2004 - 7:53pm

Clancy Ratliff

221 Griffin Hall | P.O. Box 44691 | Department of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette | Lafayette, LA 70504

http://culturecat.net

Academic Employment

Assistant Professor and Director of First-Year Writing, Department of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette: August 2007-present.

Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition, Department of English, East Carolina University: August 2006-May 2007.

Graduate Instructor, University of Minnesota: August 2002-May 2006.

Instructor, Roane State Community College: January 2002-May 2002.

Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Tennessee: August 1999-May 2001.

Education

Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication, Minor in Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota, September 2006.
Dissertation: "Where Are the Women?" Rhetoric and Gender in Weblog Discourse. Committee: Mary Lay Schuster (Chair), Laura J. Gurak, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, Joanna O'Connell, Geoffrey Sirc.

M.A. in English, Technical Communication emphasis, University of Tennessee, 2001.
Thesis: "I Cannot Read This Story Without Rewriting It": Haraway, Cyborg Writing, and Burkean Form.

B.A. in English, Minor in Photography, University of North Alabama, 1997.

Areas of Specialization

Composition Studies, Writing Program Administration, Feminist Rhetorics, Writing Technologies, Modern Rhetorical Theory, Technical Communication, Research Methodologies, Intellectual Property / Authorship

Articles and Book Chapters

Ratliff, C. (2009). Policing miscarriage: Infertility blogging, rhetorical enclaves, and the case of House Bill 1677. WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 37, 125-145.

Ratliff, C. (2009). Some rights reserved: Weblogs with Creative Commons licenses. In Westbrook, S. (Ed.), Composition, Copyright, and Intellectual Property Law (pp. 50-67). New York: SUNY Press.

Ratliff, C. (2007). Attracting readers: Sex and audience in the blogosphere. Scholar & Feminist Online, 5.2.

Ratliff, C. (2004). Between work and play: Blogging and community knowledge-making. Lore: An e-journal for teachers of writing. Available at http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/lore/digressions/content.htm?dis11

Encyclopedia Articles

Ratliff, C. (2006). Feminist standpoint theory. In Trauth, E.M. (Ed.), The encyclopedia of gender and information technology (pp. 335-340). Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.

Ratliff, C. (2006). Postmodern feminism. In Trauth, E.M. (Ed.), The encyclopedia of gender and information technology (pp. 1018-1022). Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.

Ratliff, C. (2005). Essentialism. In Heywood, L.L. (Ed.), The women's movement today: An encyclopedia of third wave feminism (pp. 122-123). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Ratliff, C. (2005). Performativity. In Heywood, L.L. (Ed.), The women's movement today: An encyclopedia of third wave feminism (pp. 240-242). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Edited Collections

In Progress: The CCCC-IP Annual: Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2009, online collection of essays for the CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus, publication 2010.

The CCCC-IP Annual: Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2008, online collection of essays for the CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus, 2009. Edited the collection and wrote one article, "Open Access in 2008: The Harvard Policy and the APA's Attempt to Profit from the NIH Open Access Mandate." Available at http://www.ncte.org/cccc/committees/ip/2008developments

The CCCC-IP Annual: Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2007, online collection of essays for the CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus, 2008. Edited the collection and wrote one article, "The National Institutes of Health Open Access Mandate: Public Access for Public Funding." Available at http://www.ncte.org/cccc/committees/ip/2007developments

Gurak, L.J., Antonijevic, S., Johnson, L., Ratliff, C., & Reyman, J. (Eds.). (2004). Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs. Available at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/. Reviewed in Computers and Composition Online, Fall 2004.

Book Reviews

In Progress: Review of Technological ecologies & sustainability, eds. Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Heidi A. McKee, and Richard (Dickie) Selfe. Computers and Composition Digital Press.

In Progress: Review of Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action, eds. Kristine Blair, Radhika Gajjala, Christine Tulley. Hampton Press.

In Press: Review of Women's Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition, by Michelle Ballif, Diane Davis, and Roxanne Mountford. JAC: Rhetoric, Writing, Culture, Politics, fall 2008 issue.

In Press: Review of The Rhetoric of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law and the Regulation of Digital Culture, by Jessica Reyman. Computers and Composition, fall 2010 issue.

Scholarships and Awards

Hugh Burns Best Dissertation Award, Computers and Composition, May 2007.

John Lovas Memorial Academic Weblog Award, Kairos, May 2006.

Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, University of Minnesota, May 2005 (university-wide).

Scholarship, Internet Law Program, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA. May 13-15, 2004.

J. Paul Blakely Award of Excellence, Society for Technical Communication, East Tennessee Chapter, March 2001.

Administrative Experience

Director of First-Year Writing, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, August 2007-present. Duties include:

Supervise approximately 60 teachers in a program that serves roughly 4000 students per semester and includes basic writing and honors writing courses
Calibrate placement and transfer credit cases for students based on test scores and writing samples
Assess the curriculum (textbooks, outcomes, student writing in the aggregate) continually
Assist the Writing Center Director with administrative matters
Arrange, promote, and facilitate faculty development workshops
Review syllabi for first-year writing courses
Participate in professional development and curriculum alignment workshops at local high schools
Serve as judge for the Ann Dobie Outstanding Freshman Essay Award and the Outstanding New Teacher Award each year
Advise teachers and students regarding attendance problems, plagiarism cases, and grade appeals

Interviews

Clancy Ratliff: Blogger, Scholar...Blogger Scholar: An Interview by Meredith Graupner (Bowling Green State University and Christine Denecker (University of Findlay). Computers and Composition Online, Spring 2008.

Blogs About Business Travel Begin to Feel the Power by Christopher Elliott, The New York Times, September 18, 2006.

Blog this: Posting views for all to see is not new by Thana Dharmaraah, Guelph Mercury, June 2, 2006.

Not just personal use anymore: U courses tap into blogging by Marni Ginther, The Minnesota Daily, February 17, 2006.

Broads on Blogs: An increasingly popular political forum is attracting women with something to say, but is the blogosphere still a man's world? by Stephanie Schorow, SadieMag, November 2005.

Outlook: What's next for blogging? In Bruns, A., & Jacobs, J. (Eds.), Uses of Blogs. Forthcoming from Peter Lang Publishing. Original questions and answers posted July 24, 2005.

Into the blogosphere: Women find a voice and a community on Internet blogs by Taylor Eisenman, Minnesota Women's Press, April 5, 2005.

It's almost as good as being there by Kathy Boccella, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 8, 2004. Also ran in the Chicago Tribune, December 5, 2004.

Stop press: little Timmy ate his lunch by Lucy Atkins, The Guardian, September 29, 2004. Also ran in The Hindu, September 30, 2004.

Outlet for parents — fun for the masses by Molly Millett, St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 14, 2004. Also ran in the Austin American Statesman, October 26, 2004; the Seattle Times, September 19, 2004; and the Arizona Central, September 4, 2004.

Blogging communities’ popularity draws students by Patricia Drey, The Minnesota Daily, March 26, 2003.

Courses Taught

University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, August 2007-present.

English 102, Writing and Research about Culture
English 293, Writing Center Tutoring
English 457, Classical Rhetoric
English 501, Teaching College English
English 509, Teaching College English Practicum

East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, August 2006-May 2007.

English 1100, Composition I (two sections, one honors)
English 3030, Introduction to Rhetorical Studies
English 3810, Advanced Composition
English 7765, Special Studies Seminar: Research Ethics for a Complex World

University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, August 2002-May 2006.

Rhetoric 1101: Writing to Inform, Convince, and Persuade (five sections)
Rhetoric 1223: Oral Presentations in Professional Settings (four sections)
Rhetoric 3266: Group Process, Team Building, and Leadership (one section)
Rhetoric 3562W: Technical and Professional Writing (two sections)

Roane State Community College, La Follette, TN, January 2002-May 2002.

English 1010: Composition I (one section)

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, August 1999-May 2001.

English 101: English Composition I (two sections)
English 102: English Composition II (two sections)
Interdisciplinary Studies 493: Technical Writing Module, Ronald McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program (one section)

Dissertation and Thesis Committee Work

Chair, Dissertation: Thomas Reynolds, Wiki Readers Wiki Writers (in progress)
Chair, Dissertation: Kate Lane, Taking Sex Out of the Bedroom: Re-Visioning Ourselves through Sex and the City (defended October 16, 2009)
Chair, Master's Thesis: Shay Frith, Truthiness and Wikiality: A Comparison of Plato to Stephen Colbert in Criticizing Modern and/or Ancient Sophists

Conference Presentations, National

“'Public Access for Public Funding': Copyright, Taxpayer Funding, and Open Access Scholarship.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, Louisville, KY, scheduled March 2010.

“How Suffragist Rhetoric Resembles Blogosphere Rhetoric.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, San Francisco, CA, March 11, 2009.

“What Can Composition Learn from Political Blogging? Tapping into the Agora.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, New Orleans, LA, April 4, 2008.

“Bumper Cars and Bloodsports: The Political Blogosphere and the Writing Classroom.” Feminisms and Rhetorics, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, AR. October 5, 2007.

“Peer-to-Peer Review, Metadata, and Distant Reading: Introducing MediaCommons, a New Scholarly Network.” Computers and Writing, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. May 18, 2007.

“Digital Writing Research(ers): Institutional Review Boards: Mapping the Issues for Organizational Position Statements.” (Roundtable). Computers and Writing, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. May 18, 2007.

“Negotiating and Regulating Plagiarism in Everyday Blogging Practices.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, New York, NY. March 2007.

"Coalition-Building on Weblogs: Negotiating Innovation and Access in Writing Pedagogy." Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, IL. March 2006.

"Carnival in the Commons: New Directions and Old Challenges for Online Scholarly Publishing." Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Washington, D.C. December 2005.

"'The Parental Is Political': Gender, Punditry, and Weblogs." Conference on College Composition and Communication, San Francisco, CA. March 16, 2005.

Chair, "Owning Knowledge: New Intersections of Intellectual Property, Technology, and Academia." Conference on College Composition and Communication, San Francisco, CA. March 2005.

"Whose Voices Get Heard? Gender Politics in the Blogosphere." Conference on College Composition and Communication, San Antonio, TX. March 26, 2004. Available at http://culturecat.net/node/view/303.

"Women Born Women Only: The Dialogue Between the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and Camp Trans." Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s), The Ohio State University, October 23, 2003.

"Sites of Resistance: Weblogs and Creative Commons Licenses." Association of Internet Researchers, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 18, 2003. Available at http://culturecat.net/files/ClancyRatliff.AoIR.2003.pdf.

"Blogging as Social Action: The Weblog as Genre." Computers and Writing, Purdue University, May 23, 2003

"Kairosnews: A Weblog for the Computers and Writing Community." Computers and Writing, Purdue University, May 24, 2003.

"Looking to Lorde and Daly: When It's Not Okay to Be Silent in Feminist Rhetorical Theory." Conference on College Composition and Communication, New York, New York, March 20, 2003.

"Kairosnews: A Weblog for the Rhetoric Community." Conference on College Composition and Communication, New York, New York, March 21, 2003.

"The Populist Cyborg: Resituating Haraway in Activism." Humanities and Technology Association, Terre Haute, Indiana, October 25, 2002.

"What is Form to a Cyborg? Burkean Form for a Postmodern Audience." Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, Illinois, March 23, 2002.

Conference Presentations, Regional

“Open Source Software and the Digital Divide: Revisiting the Issue of Access in Computers and Composition Studies.” Louisiana Association of College Composition, Monroe, LA. November 2009.

“'No More Than a Year': Isocrates and the Assessment of First-Year Writing.” Louisiana Association of College Composition, Alexandria, LA. November 15, 2008.

“Opportunities for Teaching Civic Literacy in Louisiana.” Louisiana Association of College Composition, New Orleans, LA. November 17, 2007.

“Attracting Readers: Sex and Audience in the Blogosphere.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Charlotte, NC. November 11, 2006.

"Gender, Punditry, and Weblogs: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Blogging’s Challenge to Current Understandings of Political Discourse." New Research for New Media: Innovative Research Methodologies Symposium. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. September 15-16, 2005.

"Blogging to Learn: Engaging Students, Building Community." Academy of Distinguished Teachers Conference, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. April 25, 2005.

"Blogging and the Mainstream Media." Society of Professional Journalists' Region 6 Conference, Bloomington, MN. April 2, 2005.

"Making the Adjunct Visible: Normativity in Academia and Subversive Heteroglossia in the Invisible Adjunct Weblog Community." Great Plains Alliance for Computers and Writing Conference, North Dakota State University. April 24, 2004. Available at http://culturecat.net/ia.

Invited Presentations/Workshops

"Using Podcasting Software to Comment on Student Writing.” Teaching with Technology 2006: A Think-In of Best Practices, East Carolina University Academic Outreach, November 9, 2006.

“Increasing Students’ Sense of Ownership and Participation in a Course Weblog.” (Co-presented with Jonathan Goodwin.) Teaching with Technology 2006: A Think-In of Best Practices, East Carolina University Academic Outreach, November 9, 2006.

Next/Text Meeting for Rhetoric, Composition, and the Digital Textbook. The Institute for the Future of the Book, Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California. April 26, 2006.

“Uses of Blogging and Social Bookmarking in the Classroom.” Web 2.0: Promoting Collaboration and Student-Centered Learning. Technology-Enhanced Learning Seminar Series, University of Minnesota Digital Media Center. April 5, 2006.

“Using Weblogs as Project Management Tools, Sounding Boards, or Everyday Journals.” Writing for the Web, University of Minnesota Compleat Scholar Program, College of Continuing Education. February 13, 2006.

“Weblogs in Writing Pedagogy: Learning Objectives, Questions, and Issues.” Assigning Blogs. Spring 2006 Workshop Series, University of Minnesota Center for Writing. February 2, 2006.

“Live-Action Progymnasmata! Or, Using Weblogs in Writing Courses: Pedagogical Windfalls, Practical Advice, and Tips for Using UThink.” University of Minnesota Department of Rhetoric Instructor Orientation. August 31, 2005.

"Weblogs and Wikis in Teaching." With Krista Kennedy. University of Minnesota Digital Media Center Faculty Fellowship Program, February 10, 2005 and November 16, 2005.

“Into the Blogosphere: New Models of Research and Publication with Blogs.” With Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Krista Kennedy, and Jessica Reyman. University of Minnesota Center for Advanced Feminist Studies Colloquium Series, November 29, 2004.

"Weblogs in Education and Training." Communication 385, Media Relations, Metropolitan State University. Instructor: Victoria Sadler. November 1, 2004.

"Online Writing / Writing Online: A Workshop for Instructors Who Assign Writing." Fall 2004 Workshop Series, University of Minnesota Center for Writing. October 29, 2004.

"Gender and Weblogs." Women's Studies 3306, Pop Culture Women, University of Minnesota. Instructor: Tiffany Muller. July 20, 2004.

Service (Profession)

Member, Editorial Board, Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing http://writingspaces.org/

Member, Editorial Board, MediaCommons: A Digital Scholarly Network http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/

Member, CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus, 2003-present. Co-chair during academic year 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.

Peer Reviewer, Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference 2009

Social Software Special Interest Group, Conference on College Composition and Communication, New York, NY, March 2007.

Open Source Software Special Interest Group, Conference on College Composition and Communication, New York, NY, March 2007.

Co-Chair, Blogging Special Interest Group, Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, IL, March 2006. Participant in SIG for CCCC 2005.

Organizing Committee, Computers and Writing Online 2005.

Peer Reviewer, Computers and Writing 2007: Virtual Urbanism. Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.

Peer Reviewer, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Peer Reviewer, NWSA Journal

Peer Reviewer, New Media and Society

Peer Reviewer, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research

Site Administrator, Computers and Writing Conference Weblog

Founder and Associate Editor, Kairosnews: A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.

Feminist Rhetoric Field Editor, rhetcomp.com: A Portal of Sites Relevant to the Field of Rhetoric and Composition.

Service (University of Louisiana at Lafayette)

Global Competency Rapid Action Team for University General Education Assessment

Admission by Exception Committee

Chair, First-Year Writing Committee

Women’s Studies Committee

Personnel Committee, (2-year term 2007-2008, 2008-2009)

Graduate Admissions Committee

Placement Committee

Graduate Course Offerings Committee (2-year term 2009-2010, 2010-2011)

Continuing Assistantships Committee

Awards Committee

Chair, Search committee, Instructor position (academic year 2007-2008)

Chair, Search committee, Writing Center Director position (academic year 2008-2009)

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Feminism

Mary Lay Schuster on Material Rhetoric and Midwifery

Prelims Are Up

The Unfolding of the Discourse

Books you'd write if you had time

Portal

Scholarly Journals

Wikiroll

Podcasting

Miscellaneous