WelcomeFrom the Department ChairThe Department of Rhetoric & Writing seeks to graduate students who are prepared to meet the communication tasks required of them in the 21st century. To achieve that goal, our faculty and instructors promote effective writing and critical reading skills among all undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin. We are responsible for the effective teaching of RHE306, the required first-year course in argumentation, and we have designed an array of lower- and upper-division courses to help undergraduates develop literacy in traditional and emerging genres of communication. What’s more, we offer an undergraduate degree to meet the interests of writers who wish to perform superbly in civic and professional forums; and our graduate program, administered through the Department of English, is one of the highest ranked rhetoric programs in the nation. To ensure that our teaching draws upon a continually broadening knowledge base and discussion of best practices, we sustain among our distinguished faculty and graduate students cutting-edge research in a variety of fields: rhetoric, writing, and technology. — Linda Ferreira-Buckley The Department of Rhetoric and Writing Welcomes New Assistant ProfessorWe are pleased to welcome Eric Pritchard, the newest member of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing faculty. Dr. Pritchard comes to us from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his M.A. in Afro-American Studies in May 2004 and Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Composition and Rhetoric in May 2008. In his dissertation, “A Litany for Survival”: Black Queer Literacies, Dr. Pritchard analyzes the literacy traditions within African-American LGBT communities. Clay Spinuzzi Honored with Alumni Recognition AwardClay Spinuzzi, associate professor and outgoing CWRL director, has been honored with a 2008 Alumni Recognition Award by the Iowa State University Department of English. Spinuzzi received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Professional Communication from Iowa State in 1999. Since then, he has received four NCTE awards for his scholarship. His first book, Tracing Genres through Organizations (MIT Press, 2003), was named NCTE's 2004 Best Book in Technical or Scientific Communication. His second book, Network, is currently in press at Cambridge University Press. Spinuzzi was also named Honored Alumnus in Spring 2006 by the University of North Texas Department of English, where he received his MA in English with emphasis in technical writing. |
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