CLA: Department of Writing Studies

We are very pleased to announce that Chris Haas will join the Writing Studies department in fall, 2010. Her articles have appeared in the prominent journals in composition and writing studies--Journal of Business and Technical Communication, College Composition and Communication, Research in the Teaching of English, and Written Communication. Her work also includes studies of writing in the workplace and classroom. One focus of Professor Haas's research has been, to cite the title of her book, Writing Technology: Studies in the Materiality of Literacy. She has charted the path of digital technologies from word processing, digital writing, hypertext, web environments, new media language, and most recently to instant messaging.

She has also been the editor of the internationally recognized journal, Written Communication, since 2004. That journal will be re-located to the University of Minnesota next year.

In spring semester, 2011, Professor Haas will teach a graduate seminar on Literacy: Theory, History, Practice.

We welcome her to the University of Minnesota!

Posted by Shannon at 3:17 PM | Permalink

Ph.D. candidate, Merry Rendahl, recently published an article, "It's Not The Matrix: Thinking about Online Writing Instruction," in M/MLA, the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. Merry has taught writing in online, face-to-face, and hybrid formats. Her dissertation on online writing courses for first-year students will be completed in the 2009- I0 academic year.

The article resulted from her 2008 conference presentation, "Connecting Teachers and Students in Digital Writing Classrooms," which was part of the Digital Humanities special panel. Kathleen Diffley, Executive Director and Editor, invited her to submit my paper.

Rendahl, Merry A. "It's Not the Matrix: Thinking about Online Writing Instruction." M/MLA 42.1 (2009): 133-150. Print.

Traditional classrooms, and the simultaneous gathering of teacher and students therein, function as a ''transparent technology" of education, an assumed, unquestionable practice, one to which online learning is often juxtaposed. Yet the current configuration of "the classroom" is not inevitable; it carries within it many cultural values and warrants critical examination.

Posted by Shannon at 10:25 AM | Permalink