Dr. Simone Sessolo has generously stepped into the Associate Director position on an interim basis for the 2021-22 academic year, a role Dr. Naomi Silver occupied for the last dozen years. Dr. Sessolo holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin (2012). He joined Sweetland in fall 2012 and has contributed substantially to many initiatives. He has taught Writing 100, 200, and 201; as well as Writing 300 and 301 in the Peer Writing Consultant Program. He also offers classes at the graduate level and has been co-director of the summer Dissertation Writing Institute since 2018. He is also co-director of Sweetland’s Digital Rhetorical Collaborative. For the past few years, he led a group of colleagues in developing The Dissertation ECoach, a messaging tool that provides targeted feedback to writers. Last year, he won the Digital Studies Initiative inaugural teaching award—so he literally set the standard for pedagogical excellence in digital environments!
The Sweetland Director, faculty, and staff are delighted he’s willing to commit his considerable energy, clear thinking, excellent problem-solving skills, outstanding knowledge of writing pedagogy, and splendid organizational abilities to help administer the unit. He brings admirable efficiency and a well-informed perspective to administrative decision making, and we are all happy to work with him in this new role.
In April, 2021, Dr. Naomi Silver stepped down from her position as Associate Director of Sweetland. She became Associate Director in 2007, and her long tenure is testament to her commitment to our unit. Dr. Silver steered Sweetland along several directors and changes, always providing stability and excellence.
Dr. Silver deserves special recognition for her contributions over the years she served as Associate Director. Sweetland is nationally renowned in large part because of Dr. Silver’s leadership. In particular, her initiative and thinking started the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative in 2013, establishing a space for digital rhetoricians to inquire about new ideas, conversations, and activities. Dr. Silver will continue to direct the DRC and work with graduate-student fellows from all over the country.
Having returned to a full-time faculty position, Dr. Silver is excited to teach courses in digital and embodied rhetorics, as well as the seminar in peer-consulting this Winter 2022. She’s been a beacon of stability and resilience as Associate Director for many years, teaching us all at Sweetland what it means to represent this unit with care and distinction. Students at U-M are very lucky that Dr. Silver will share her passion and expertise with them in her wonderful classes.
One way or another, through class observations, discussions, support, and collaboration, Dr. Silver contributed to the development of all of us here at Sweetland. We are thankful she dedicated so many years to serve as Associate Director of Sweetland, and she has our deepest gratitude.
Dr. Raechelle (Shelley) Manis deserves special recognition for her contributions over the past few years to both the Minor in Writing (MiW) and the Peer Writing Consultant Program (PWCP). Dr. Manis’s courses cover the first- to the fourth-year curriculum, and all witness to her extraordinary creativity and commitment to each student she meets. She regularly teaches our crucial gateway and capstone courses in the MiW, as well as first-year writing and second-year writing courses for Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts (LSWA).
During the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years, she moved into a leadership role for the MiW, while also serving as Interim Director for the PWCP. Her PWCP duties involve teaching a required course (Writing 301), organizing weekly staff meetings, planning for consultants’ professional development, and recruiting new consultants. Not only was this a new program for Dr. Manis, but it was also a program that had to be re-invented for remote teaching and tutoring before again being reinvented this year for in-person activities. Covid courses haven’t been a pedagogical detour for her, however, but an important part of her professional development from which she learns how to improve her teaching using all the tools at her disposal.
Daniel Hartlep, the Undergraduate Program Coordinator who provides staff support for both the MiW and PWCP, greatly appreciates the time Dr. Manis has spent over the past year or so orienting him to his new position, listening to consultants in order to discern and find ways to address their needs, and teaching the students how best to do their work in a remote environment. As he puts it, “she is doing a stellar job.” Her exemplary administrative work, curriculum development, pedagogical innovations, and care for each student she encounters make her well-deserving of particular recognition for her contributions to the Sweetland mission in both the MiW and PWCP.
Hosted by the Sweetland Center for Writing, the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (DRC) is an online, community webspace by and for scholars and teachers working in computers and writing and digital rhetoric. It is also the home of a digital book series with the U-M Press.
This fall, the DRC welcomes its ninth cohort of graduate student Fellows. The program aims to recognize graduate students around the country currently working in digital rhetoric who want practical experience in online publishing and website development. Fellows are selected on a yearly basis by the editors and board of the DRC, and receive an annual stiped of $500 as well as recognition on the DRC website.
DRC Fellows commit to attending monthly online team meetings to plan projects that extend the DRC website and its contributions to the community of scholars interested in computers and writing. They work independently and collaboratively to complete two projects within the year of their term.
Last year’s fellows continued to work with creativity and passion during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they created innovative materials that include, among others, a syllabus repository and a DRC podcast. The Sweetland DRC Syllabus Repository is a public, crowd-sourced collection of syllabi of courses taught by DRC contributors. The podcast honors the spirit of the proclamation that “Black Lives Matter.” The podcast, titled The Sonic Renaissance, is an evolving conversation of black rhetorical space that foregrounds the work of music, sound, and life in the digital space of audio.
Keep your eyes open for upcoming collaborative projects from our new fellows, including a blog carnival focused around new and emerging perspectives on social media and writing studies, and an addition/expansion to the syllabus repository.
The 2021-2022 fellows are:
Sarah Hughes is a PhD candidate in the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan, where she also teaches in the English Department Writing Program. Her research interests include digital rhetoric, gender and discourse, and gaming studies. Her dissertation project explores how women use multimodal discourse—grammatically, narratively, and visually—to navigate online gaming ecologies.
Laura Menard is a PhD student in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at Bowling Green State University. Her research focuses on various forms of media rhetoric and its weaponization against women, particularly marginalized women in serial killer cases. She is also interested in racist rhetoric in local laws and court rules, and feminist rhetoric in popular culture. You can follow Laura on Twitter at @LauraLeigh425 or her blog at www.coffeewithlauraleigh.com.
Laken Brooks (she/her) is a PhD English student and a freelance writer. She researches medical humanities, digital humanities, and folklore. Brooks is particularly interested in studying how rural people, like Appalachians, use different technologies to tell better stories, have a better relationship with their bodies, and live better lives. Her work constellates several fields: disability studies, cultural rhetorics, and gender/sexuality studies. When she’s not teaching, Brooks writes about healthcare (in)accessability, LGBTQ+ and women’s history, wellness, and lifestyle topics for major outlets like CNN, the Washington Post, and Forbes.
Jennifer Burke Reifman is a 4th year Education Ph.D. student at U.C. Davis with an emphasis in Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition Studies. Her research focuses on technology in the writing classroom, writing program administration, and student identity and agency. When she isn’t being a graduate student and writing teacher, she spends most of her time playing with her 2-year old son, tending her backyard garden, or diving into a video game.
Laura McCann is a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon University working within the rhetoric of health and medicine, technical communication, and digital rhetorics. Her dissertation project analyzes the intersection of technical and feelings discourses within stories about infertility shared online, and how these patient accounts place viscerality as the central experience within infertility. She teaches professional and technical communication, first-year writing, and has worked closely with graduate students across disciplines to improve their communication skills.
Courtney A. Mauck is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Ohio University. Her research interests include digital rhetorics, social media, multimodal composition, game studies, and writing program administration. Her dissertation project explores the composing habits of first-year writers on Snapchat in order to better understand how instructors can promote critical digital literacies using mobile/multimodal platforms. You can follow her on Twitter at @courtneyamauck.
Forthcoming Digital Rhetoric Collaborative Books
This past year the Digital Collaborative Book series, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press, saw a new book project go into production: Erika Sparby’s Memetic Rhetorics. The project untangles some of the complexities of memes by determining how memes function rhetorically in our society, examining rhetorical and ethical considerations, highlighting how memes fuel cultural ideology, and finding ways to reveal and reject uncritical memetic behavior. The book presents a rhetorical toolkit for meming that goes beyond the core digital and rhetorical characteristics that give a meme a chance to thrive in the meme pool. In addition, Sparby offers key considerations and suggestions for how memers can meme ethically.
Lori Moizio completed her BA in Economics at the University of Michigan, and then went on to receive graduate degrees in Elementary Education and Teaching, Reading Specialization. After having worked at Pattengill Elementary School for the past thirteen years, Lori wanted to transition from the field of elementary education to a student services position that allows her to grow and learn, while continuing to offer her talents and skills in the educational setting.
Some of Lori’s strengths, as we all have witnessed, are the ability to manage multiple responsibilities at once and to build strong relationships with students, staff, and faculty. She developed these strengths in her role as an educator: designing lessons and assignments, teaching diverse learners, and working with parents. We are very happy to welcome her as “the face” of Sweetland.
Lori is married to Rich, whom she met while living in South Quad as an undergrad. She has two wonderful adult children: Jordan lives in Ann Arbor and is a product manager for an automotive company, and Ben is a civil engineer in Portland, OR. She also has two very senior cats named Nacho and Cocoa, who are a lot of fun! Outside of work, Lori loves to do anything outdoors in nature. She spends a lot of time taking walks, bike riding, hiking and camping. She and Rich are on a mission to visit as many national parks as possible.
Danielle Colburn • English 2018 Minor in Writing Peer Writing Consultant I just started work at a consulting firm in Chicago. I’m on the Digital Consumer Experience, focusing on content management & marketing! For now that means copy writing and SEO work.
Elise Vocke • International Studies 2019 Minor in Writing After graduating from U-M, I spent a year working at a startup in NYC and teaching English in Madrid with lots of churros, tapas, and places to explore. Now I am back in the US working at Indeed.com in SBS Optimization to help people get jobs!
Akili Echols • Sociology 2021 Minor in Writing & Peer Writing Consultant Next year (2021-2022) I will be completing a year of service at City Year Detroit.
Kaitlyn Ender • Psychology 2021 Minor in Writing & Peer Writing Consultant I am pursuing my MSW at U-M’s School of Social Work. My focus areas are child welfare, as well as leadership and management. I plan to continue using my writing as a tool to advocate for children and give them a voice.
Emily Wolhart • Economics 2021 Peer Writing Consultant After graduation, I moved to Washington, DC where I work as a data analyst in the insurance industry. Even though my job involves lots of coding and number crunching, I still use the skills I developed through Sweetland daily. On the weekends, I love exploring the city and watching Michigan football. Go Blue!
Sweetland and the English Department Writing Program offer prizes for student writers in LSA. Sweetland’s prizes include: the Prize for Outstanding Writing Portfolio, the Matt Kelley Prize for Excellence in First-Year Writing, and the Prize for Excellence in Upper-Level Writing. Instructors nominate student writing for each of the prizes. These prizes are awarded annually in the winter term.
Matt Kelley Prize for Excellence in First-Year Writing
Sharon Kwan, “Cardcaptor Sakura’s Life-Changing Guidance” Nominated by Ali Shapiro, ARTDES 129: Matters of Taste
Audrey Tieman, “Ratatouille the TikTok Musical” Nominated by Elisabeth Fertig, COMPLIT 141: Great Performances
Excellence in Multilingual Writing
Chaewon Kim, “Liberty Renewed—Not Just Artistically” Nominated by Scott Beal, WRITING 120
Yuyang Rao, “Is the development of hydroelectric power in accordance with the principles of sustainable development?” Nominated by Shuwen Li, WRITING 120
Excellence in the Practice of Writing
Genta Gollopeni, “Remix to the Letter to Your Younger Self” Nominated by Simone Sessolo, WRITING 100
William McGraw, “Gene Therapy: What You Need to Know” Nominated by Jimmy Brancho, WRITING 100
Puneet Dhatt, “A Review of Titin: The Titans of Human Muscle” Nominated by Nicholas Garza, CHEM 353: Introduction to Biochemical Research Techniques and Scientific Writing
Kateryna Karpoff, “TGF-β1: Unraveling the Applications of a Versatile Cytokine” Nominated by Nicholas Garza, CHEM 353: Introduction to Biochemical Research Techniques and Scientific Writing
Excellence in Upper-Level Writing (Social Sciences)
Angelina Little, “Research Proposal: Reevaluating the Economic Imperative to Learn” Nominated by Nancy Burns and Ben Goehring (GSI), POLSCI 381: Political Science Research Design
Sahil Tolia, “The Social Brain Hypothesis: An Evolutionary Explanation for Our Big Brains” Nominated by Andrew Bernard, ANTHRBIO 368: Primate Social Behavior
Excellence in Upper-Level Writing (Humanities)
Leah Marks, “A Review of PLA’s Sustainability as the Future of Bioplastics” Nominated by Jimmy Brancho, WRITING 400: Advanced Rhetoric and Research, Writing and Research in the Sciences
Julia Van Goor, “A Handful of Walnuts” Nominated by Jamien Delp, ENG 325: Art of the Essay
In and out of the workplace, much about 2020 has been disturbing and challenging. Many of us have experienced deep loss and had health worries; we grieve with each other and with students as the coronavirus takes more and more lives. Black Lives Matter protests this year moved us to reaffirm our anti-racist pedagogies and policies, to work actively toward inclusion and justice for all members of the U-M community. As we reflect over the past year in this Newsletter, we honor the extraordinary efforts of students, faculty, and staff to meet new challenges, and to support each other as we do so.
In March, Sweetland began remote operations, moving all courses, the Peer Writing Consultant program, Writing Workshop, MWrite, unit meetings, and even end-of-term social gatherings online (during one unit meeting we toured a farm remotely, which gave us a much-needed break). We’ve learned a lot this year, far more than I can summarize in this brief introduction. Along with the rest of the world, we’ve become adept at managing Zoom meetings and found new ways to connect with each other and our students. This past spring, I read through students’ end-of-term comments about their winter courses and their Writing Workshop sessions. Over and over again, I witnessed their appreciation of instructors’ concern for them; students appreciated instructors’ necessary and welcome innovations, flexibility in adjusting to new formats and digital environments, and attention to students’ changing needs and difficulties.
We are all sometimes nervous about meeting new challenges, but we are also driven to keep students at the center of all we do, to concentrate on how we can make new modes of learning work for them, and to try to convey to them how much they matter to us, how important their education is, and how far we will go to support them. This year has given us many opportunities to live our cherished values together.
I am immensely proud of everyone at Sweetland and their work with student writers, and I hope the stories they share in this Newsletter will make you proud as well.
Theresa Tinkle Director, Sweetland Center for Writing
Meet Our New Undergraduate Program Coordinator – Dan Hartlep
Dan Hartlep completed his B.A. in Psychology at the University of Michigan in 2016, and recently earned his M.A. in Educational Leadership at Eastern Michigan University in April 2020. After giving the hard sciences the good ol’ college try, Dan realized that his calling was in student affairs while serving as a peer advisor in the U-M Psychology office during his senior year. Meeting one-on-one with students, discussing their educational and career goals, and weighing the pros and cons of different academic and experiential courses came so naturally that Dan felt compelled to continue working at the University while furthering his understanding of student development at EMU a few years later.
Outside of work and school, Dan has the utter joy to spend his evenings with his fiancée Amanda and their 1-year-old Corgi named Pinto. The dog-dad life suits Dan very well and he and P can be found at Swift Run Dog Park most weekends. At home, Dan and Amanda love to cook plant-based meals and find a lot of joy in discovering new restaurants and bars around the metro-Detroit area.
While having never been in the office, Dan is very excited to be a part of the Sweetland Family and has felt welcome from his very first day on the job — he can’t wait to meet everyone in person!
Meet Our New Faculty – April Conway
In her new position as a Lecturer III, April Conway is responsible for managing Writing 100, including mentoring new course instructors and consulting with Sweetland Director Theresa Tinkle and the graduate student team conducting research on the directed-self placement process.
Now working with graduate students, this fall April taught Writing 993 where she introduced concepts of the labor contract and single point rubrics as alternative assessment methods. Next term she’ll teach the humanities section of Writing 630, Sweetland’s graduate writing course, and continue to run the virtual Write-Togethers.
April has joined university efforts to support parents, including the LEO parents caucus and the faculty and staff ally group to support student parents. She continues her service as a social media content creator for the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, and she continues to volunteer with the non-profit La Conexión Immigrant Solidarity Committee to help publish the organization’s newsletter.
This term, April has been writing a book chapter titled “La Conexión: Advocating for Latinx Immigrants in Northwest Ohio” for the collection Grassroots Activisms: Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts. She also spends time making art with her daughter, baking, gardening, and walking herself and her dogs while she listens to true crime and other narrative storytelling podcasts.
Faculty News
Julie Babcock
Julie Babcock – Julie’s poetry collection won the 2019 Kithara Book Prize and just came out last week! A poem from the collection “Nothing better than to be alive and open-mouthed” is nominated for a Pushcart.
April Conway
April Conway – April joined Sweetland in a new, full time position; a co-authored chapter, “Crossing Divides: Engaging Extracurricular Writing Practices in Graduate Education and Professionalization,” was published in the book Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines: Identifying, Teaching, and Supporting; and a chapter proposal titled “La Conexión: Advocating for Latinx Immigrants in Northwest Ohio” was accepted for the book Grassroots Activisms: Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts.
Simone Sessolo
Simone Sessolo – In May 2020, Simone was awarded the Inaugural Digital Studies Institute Teaching Award. He also received grants from Rackham, CRLT, and Academic Innovation for his team’s work on the Dissertation eCoach, which started university wide in Fall 2020. In November 2020 he participated as an invited guest speaker in the MiXR Studios Podcast, produced by the Center for Academic Innovation.
Carol Tell
Carol Tell – Last summer Carol was a fellow at the 2020 Institute for the Humanities Summer Fellowship.
Mary Kruk • Women’s Studies 2017 • M-Write Fellow for STATS 250
I’m a PhD student in Psychology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State! I’ll be graduating in 2022.
Vineet Chandra • Public Policy 2018 • M-Write Fellow for ECON 101
I came back to the University of Michigan for law school. I graduate in May 2021, and I’ve accepted an offer to return to Boston and start work for a law firm.
After graduation, I took a year to work at a management consulting firm that focused on promoting behavior change to improve the environment at corporations. I’m currently living in Brooklyn, NY in my second year of medical school at New York Medical College. I’m hoping to pursue psychiatry and I’m looking forward to rotations next year to get a flavor of different specialties
Charlie Ferreri • Biomolecular Science 2018 • M-Write Fellow for CHEM 216
Following graduation I took a gap year where I worked as a medical scribe for the department of pediatric surgery at Michigan Medicine. I then started medical school in the summer of 2019 at the University of Michigan. I am a current M2 who is looking forward to beginning clinical rotations and interacting with patients.
I work as a college adviser for the University of Michigan College Advising Corps at a high school in Grand Rapids. I work under the national College Advising Corps which is an Americorps program that seeks to increase the number of low income first generation students in higher education!
Robert Dalka • Physics 2019 • M-Write Fellow for PHYSICS 140
After graduating with my degree in Physics, I moved to the Washington, D.C. area to attend the University of Maryland in their Physics PhD program. I am a part of the Physics Education Research Group at UMD. My research focuses on understanding physics departmental culture, how this culture changes, and how students are included in these change efforts.
After graduating in May 2019, I moved to NYC to start my current position as a lab manager and post-baccalaureate researcher for Dr. Catherine Hartley at NYU. I study the neurodevelopment of value-based learning, memory, and decision-making using behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging methods.
Dominic Polsinelli • Neuroscience and English 2019 • M-Write Fellow for BIOL 172
I currently live in New York City working as a research assistant in a neuroscience lab at Rockefeller University. I’ll be applying to medical school next year.
Brandon Staarmann • Business Administration 2019 • M-Write Fellow for ECON 101
Since graduating from the University of Michigan in 2019, I’ve moved to Washington, D.C., and currently work as a Software Engineer at Capital One at their headquarters in McLean, Virginia.
Sheridan Tobin • Public Health Sciences 2019 • M-Write Fellow for STATS 250
I’m a Genetic Counseling graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and will graduate in 2022.
Since graduation, I have been working in a middle school math classroom as a Student Success Coach with City Year Detroit, an AmeriCorps program focused on supporting students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District. I am also currently in the process of applying to medical school.
Jon Reid • History 2020 • M-Write Fellow for CLIMATE 102
I am attending law school at the University of Pennsylvania, and I live in Philadelphia, PA.
I’m living in SE Michigan and working remotely in a social and behavioral sciences lab at the NIH. In January I’ll be leaving for Italy on a Fulbright research grant! While I’m there I’ll be doing ethnographic research in migrant welcome centers in Palermo, Sicily.
Peer Writing Consultant Alumni
Ana Maria Guay • Classical Languages and Literatures, minor in Translation Studies 2015
After U of M, I received an MPhil in Classics from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge scholar. Although I originally went on to graduate work in Classics at UCLA, my experience with Sweetland had made a life-changing impact. I switched my focus, received a graduate certificate in writing pedagogy from UCLA, and am now a full-time Writing Learning Specialist (including supervising our writing peer tutor program!) at the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR.
Minor in Writing Alumni
Kennedy Clark • Sociology 2017 Since graduating, I’ve student-taught in Ann Arbor Public Schools, tutored college writing, and completed my M.A. in Educational Studies from UM. I currently work as an Evaluation and Assessment Coordinator at Western Michigan University’s medical school.
Rachel Hutchings • Screen Arts 2017
Since graduating, I moved to Los Angeles and began a career in the entertainment industry. I currently work at Untitled Entertainment as an assistant to talent managers, where I help clients get cast in upcoming film and television projects, and provide feedback on current scripts in development. I still keep busy with my own writing when I can!
Meagan Malm • Business Administration 2018
My research paper stemming from my Wallenberg Fellowship was published by World Development Perspectives last month. You can access the article online through February 26th. I have a summarized version on my website.
Ashley Preston • Communication Studies 2018
Since graduation, I have been working as a Content Specialist at U-M in the Division of Public Safety and Security. In my role, I write web articles and develop social media posts and campaigns. I have most enjoyed learning ways to capture the stories of my colleagues to share with our community — as I’m sure you can imagine, public safety professionals do some important, thankless work. My MiW experience was very helpful in inspiring me to tell stories in meaningful ways.
Hosted by the Sweetland Center for Writing, the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (DRC) is an online, community webspace by and for scholars and teachers working in computers and writing and digital rhetoric. It is also the home of a digital book series with the UM Press.
This fall, the DRC welcomed its eighth cohort of graduate student Fellows. The program aims to recognize graduate students around the country currently working in digital rhetoric who want practical experience in online publishing and website development. Fellows are selected on a yearly basis by the editors and board of the DRC, and receive an annual stipend of $500 as well as recognition on the DRC website.
DRC Fellows commit to attending monthly online team meetings to plan projects that extend the DRC website and its contributions to the community of computers and writing. They work independently and collaboratively to complete two projects within the year of their term.
Last year’s fellows responded with resilience and creativity to the curves thrown by 2020, curating thoughtful, responsive content in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uprisings and activism in response to police violence that marked the spring and summer months. These materials include a blog carnival on “Rhetoric and Communication in the Time of COVID-19: A Global Pandemic and Digital Rhetoric” that brought together nine responses to teaching, writing, and living in “COVID times,” in locations as widespread as China, Ghana, Canada, and the U.S. The fellows also crafted an affirmation of the principles and practices of the Black Lives Matter movement in a “Statement against Anti-Black Violence” that responded to these events from the perspective of digital rhetoricians “attuned to how technologies and their many facets are deployed in and for the projects of anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, and white supremacy.” Other projects over the course of the year — to name just a couple! — included a blog carnival on “Digital Community Building as Social Justice Praxis”, and a brand new limited podcast series titled “On the Job” that interviews faculty just completing their first year in a new position and graduate students on the job market in writing studies.
Keep your eyes open for upcoming collaborative projects from our new fellows, including a blog carnival focused around empathy, a multimedia series on Black audio work, and a crowdsourced digital rhetoric syllabus repository.
The 2020-2021 fellows are:
D’Arcee Charington Neal is a PhD student in Rhetoric and Composition at The Ohio State University, where he works at the intersection of disability and Black Digital Media. His research focuses on rhetorical displays of ableism, Afrofuturistic production, and audionarratology. Currently he is composing the opening chapter for his audio novela about a black wheelchair-user/turned digital ghost in future Neo Orleans, and can be followed on Twitter at @drchairington.
Jianfen Chen is a PhD student in the Rhetoric and Composition program at Purdue University. Currently, she teaches Introductory Composition at Purdue. Before that, she worked as a writing consultant in the Purdue Writing Lab. Her research interests include public rhetoric, digital rhetoric, risk communication, intercultural communication, and professional and technical communication. Jianfen is also a certified Chinese/English translator and interpreter. You can follow her on Twitter at @sugejianfen.
Danielle Koepke is a second year PhD student studying Public Rhetorics and Community Engagement at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has an MA in Rhetoric and Composition, and her research areas include multimodal composing practices, digital literacies, and feminist theories. She is also interested in applications of social justice pedagogies in her teaching. You can follow Danielle on Twitter at @koepke_marie13.
Sarah Hughes is a PhD candidate in the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan, where she also teaches in the English Department Writing Program. Her research interests include digital rhetoric, gender and discourse, and gaming studies. Her dissertation project explores how women use multimodal discourse—grammatically, narratively, and visually—to navigate online gaming ecologies.
Kimberly Williams is a second-year doctoral student in the English Department at the University of Florida where her work encompasses Black love and sound studies across multimedia and literature. You can find her published and upcoming work in Journal of the Society for American Music, Sounding Out! and Standpoints: Black Feminist Knowledges published by Virginia Tech Press.
Nupoor Ranade is a Ph.D. student in the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media program at the North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on audience analysis, digital rhetoric, user experience and information design, primarily in the field of technical communication and artificial intelligence. Her research experience and partnerships with the industry help her bridge gaps of knowledge that she then brings to her pedagogical practices. She is interested in exploring interdisciplinary collaborative work which helps us redefine the term audience.
New and Forthcoming Digital Rhetoric Collaborative Books!
This past year has been a busy one for the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative Book Series, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press. 2020 saw four new book projects go into production on topics as varied as writing workflows, makerspaces, screen composing, and a 100-year history of “new media” pedagogy. You can read below about the first one off the press this past December, and look for the others in 2021!
Writing Workflows: Beyond Word Processing by Tim Lockridge (Miami University) and Derek Van Ittersum (Kent State University) argues that a workflow-focused approach to composing can help writers and writing instructors evaluate and adopt the technologies that make writing possible, highlighting the role of writing tools as full-fledged actors in writing activity. The book draws on case studies of professional writers who deliberately and carefully construct writing workflows that lead them to make critical evaluations of their tools, their purpose(s), and the contexts in which they compose. Through a type of reflection the authors call “workflow thinking,” writers can look at their processes and ask how tools shape their habits—and how a change in tools might offer new ways of thinking and writing. The book also introduces a practice the authors call “workflow mapping,” which helps writers trace their tool preferences across time and imagine how new technologies might fit in. In addition to its extensive use of images, hyperlinks, screen casts, and other digital artifacts to enhance meaning, Writing Workflows incorporates innovative audio overlays to, quite literally, give voice to the research participants. Writing Workflows is winner of the 2018 Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative Book Prize.
The Fellows Seminar brings together graduate student instructors (Junior Fellows) and faculty (Senior Fellows) from multiple disciplines who share a commitment to integrating writing in their courses. The program is supported by the College of Literature, Science & the Arts, the Rackham Graduate School, and the Sweetland Center for Writing.
All seminar participants share an interest in helping students become better writers; integrating writing in their courses; and discussing critical issues in the teaching of writing with colleagues.
The Sweetland Fellows Seminar was the most rewarding and enriching pedagogical training I have received at the University. Not only did we read contemporary research on how to effectively center writing in our teaching, the seminar also provided a space for collaborative sharing among faculty, staff, and graduate students who occupy different disciplinary spaces and fill different pedagogical roles. In the process of discussing our various aims for teaching writing and working together to design assignments and assignment sequences, I formed meaningful professional relationships that lasted beyond the seminar. As teachers, we most often focus on how to impart the knowledge of our disciplines to our students, but the seminar provided a rare opportunity to work together across disciplines in our pedagogical practice.
Lucy Peterson, Junior Fellow
2020 Junior Fellows
Anna Cornel, Classical Languages and Literature Kim Hess, Sociology Benjamin Hollenbach, Anthropology Tugce Kayaal, Near Eastern Studies Jane Kitaevich, Political Science Hongling Lu, Material Science & Engineering Lucy Peterson, Political Science Niku Tarhechu Tarhesi, Anthropology
2020 Senior Fellows
Gina Cervetti, School of Education Christine Modey, Sweetland Center for Writing Ragnhild Nordaas, Political Science Colleen Seifert, Psychology Twila Tardif, Psychology Tessa Tinkle, Sweetland Center for Writing
Sweetland and the English Department Writing Program offer prizes for student writers in LSA. Sweetland’s prizes include: the Prize for Outstanding Writing Portfolio, the Matt Kelley Prize for Excellence in First-Year Writing, and the Prize for Excellence in Upper-Level Writing. Instructors nominate student writing for each of the prizes. These prizes are awarded annually in the winter term.
Matt Kelley Prize for Excellence in First-Year Writing
Grace Brown, “An Open Letter to Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League: Concerning Your Editorial on the Equality Act” Nominated by Genta Nishku, COMPLIT 122
Jackson Mott, “Life Sucks, And Then You Die” Nominated by Cat Cassel, LSWA 125
Excellence in Multilingual Writing
Hao Chen, “Reasons for Digital Piracy Behavior and Strategies to Stop It” Nominated by Allison Piippo, WRITING 120
Kyungrae Lee, “Do Not Take Anything Slightly” Nominated by Scott Beal, WRITING 120
Excellence in the Practice of Writing
Alyssa Huang, “Huángruìxīn” Nominated by Gina Brandolino, WRITING 100
Dallas Witbeck, “I am a Twig in a Nature of Drawing: The Story of Finding my Major” Nominated by Hannah Webster, WRITING 100
Excellence in Upper-Level Writing (Social Sciences)
Max Steinbaum, “D.C. Dog Fight: Principle and Pragmatism of the Bush-era Supreme Court” Nominated by Jacob Walden, POLSCI 319: Politics of Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
Maryellen Zbrozek, “The Plastic Problem: What are Scientists doing to Reduce their Environmental Footprint?” Nominated by Julie Halpert, ENVIRON 320: Environmental Journalism – Reporting about Science, Policy and Public Health
Excellence in Upper-Level Writing (Sciences)
Alice Sorel, “Cerebral Organoids: Promising New Window into Neurodevelopment” Nominated by Jimmy Brancho, WRITING 400: Writing and Research in the Sciences
Franco Tavella, “Gene editing for the 21st century: CRISPR/Cas9 and Prime Editing” Nominated by Qiong Yang, BIOPHYS 450/550: Intro to Biophysics Laboratory
Excellence in Upper-Level Writing (Humanities)
Jinan Abufarha, “عنوان” Nominated by Christine Modey, WRITING 300: Seminar in Peer Writing Consultation
Davis Boos, “A Second Exile: Mario Benedetti’s Absence in English” Nominated by Marlon James Sales, COMPLIT 322: Translated Wor(l)ds
The Gayle Morris Sweetland Center for Writing was founded in 1998, and I was lucky to be the inaugural director. Expectations for the Center were high, for John Sweetland’s handsome endowment made it possible for us to introduce new programs to support and improve writing in LSA.
I am back in the director’s office this year and awed by how much has happened since the Center opened. The Peer Writing Consultant program has existed since the start of the Center, but it’s expanded and gained greater intellectual depth over the years. The peer consultants work with undergraduates from all over the U-M campus to communicate strategies that will improve their academic writing, job and graduate school application materials, and personal writing. MWrite fellows likewise support undergraduates as they learn to write for courses in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Another diverse and ambitious group of students pursues a Minor in Writing, for which they engage in research that culminates in complex multimodal projects. When I visit Sweetland consultants, fellows, and minors, I am overjoyed to see their enthusiasm about writing and commitment to their projects.
The Sweetland faculty who support and direct these programs are highly professional and profoundly accomplished in many directions. Some faculty members produce impressive creative publications, and all of the faculty contribute significantly to the scholarship of teaching and learning. As part of their work, they also consult individually with students at every level from across UM. When I observe their sessions, I’m struck by how quickly they discern what help the student is seeking, and I’m impressed with how much they accomplish in a half hour or hour. Sitting in my office, I’m delighted to hear the faculty greet each student with sincere interest in their writing. This is surely just about the best job in the world. I invite you to discover what’s happening here.
— Theresa Tinkle, Sweetland Center for Writing Interim Director
