I currently instruct composition and technical communication students. My research focuses on cultural studies and tech/comm pedagogy, where I aim to teach students ethical public understandings in science and research strategies to identify and avoid false claims and what has become know as "alternative facts." Supervisors: Andrew Fiss, Jennifer Daryl Slack, and Stefka Hristova
Open Access Master's Report, Michigan Technological University, 2017
This report details a class taught that was an exploration into the value of STEAM or science, te... more This report details a class taught that was an exploration into the value of STEAM or science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics within the confines of Technical Communication as it applies to the business and industry of theatre. It was an experiment in service learning as it could be tied into the Arts via differing technai, as described by John Wild in “Plato’s Theory of Texnh a Phenomenological Interpretation,” demonstrating a necessity for Arts as they pertain to STEM-centric universities. This report discusses a section of Technical and Professional Communication taught at Michigan technological University that consisted of twenty-five students investigating theatre as an industry and business and applying the theory and practice of Technical Communication, specifically in the context of Kelli Cargile Cook’s Layered Literacies to bridge STEM, the humanities, and the Arts. The theatre with which students collaborated worked closely with faculty and staff within various areas of that department. The students in the Technical Communication classroom were predominantly STEM majors. This offered a unique opportunity to demonstrate the potential for the Arts to cross academic disciplines at a STEM-focused university and emphasize the importance of interdisciplinarity through a better community literacy.
In this reading, writing, and computer-intensive class, you'll engage in communication that aims ... more In this reading, writing, and computer-intensive class, you'll engage in communication that aims to clearly and concisely transmit complex information to both experts and nonexperts. This practice will extend across multiple genres, such as emails, memos, resumes, cover letters, transmittal letters, progress reports, and terminal reports. The work in this course will focus extensively on communicating through technology.
This class is designed to lead students to examine and interpret communication practices and appl... more This class is designed to lead students to examine and interpret communication practices and apply what they learn to their own written, spoken, and visual compositions. While writing is the core focus of this class, students will also practice composing in other modes, as well. This class will also be focussing on both contextual and textual analysis; class projects will ask them to attend to audience, purpose, context, and text as well as the more traditional Aristotelian appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos. The students will produce texts over a series of drafts in order to hone their skills as thoughtful multimodal communicators.
Corruption and Illiberal Politics in the Trump Era, 2021
Presidential campaign slogans operate as shorthand phrases that succinctly convey a worldview to ... more Presidential campaign slogans operate as shorthand phrases that succinctly convey a worldview to a select set of audiences. In his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Donald J. Trump aroused visions of the American Dream and who might have access to it by using three slogans to summon the idea of a deserving yet overlooked white underclass that had been “left-behind” by an unfairly rewarded and privileged minority that was morally corrupt. The slogans were “Make America Great Again,” “America First,” and “Keep America Great.” These slogans are directly tied to the racist discourses historically associated with the Ku Klux Klan in the United States (1865-present) and the Nazi movements of the 1930s and 1940s in Germany. While the Trump campaign initially concealed as a public secret the alignment of these three slogans with a history of white supremacy, by 2020 they had become outright propaganda for white supremacy. Here, a semiotic analysis exposes the historical connections between these phrases and white supremacist movements and thereby reveals the racist ideologies behind Trump’s vision of a Great America. By demonizing minority groups as backward and morally corrupt, Trump was able to displace his own political corruption onto the “Other.”
Open Access Master's Report, Michigan Technological University, 2017
This report details a class taught that was an exploration into the value of STEAM or science, te... more This report details a class taught that was an exploration into the value of STEAM or science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics within the confines of Technical Communication as it applies to the business and industry of theatre. It was an experiment in service learning as it could be tied into the Arts via differing technai, as described by John Wild in “Plato’s Theory of Texnh a Phenomenological Interpretation,” demonstrating a necessity for Arts as they pertain to STEM-centric universities. This report discusses a section of Technical and Professional Communication taught at Michigan technological University that consisted of twenty-five students investigating theatre as an industry and business and applying the theory and practice of Technical Communication, specifically in the context of Kelli Cargile Cook’s Layered Literacies to bridge STEM, the humanities, and the Arts. The theatre with which students collaborated worked closely with faculty and staff within various areas of that department. The students in the Technical Communication classroom were predominantly STEM majors. This offered a unique opportunity to demonstrate the potential for the Arts to cross academic disciplines at a STEM-focused university and emphasize the importance of interdisciplinarity through a better community literacy.
In this reading, writing, and computer-intensive class, you'll engage in communication that aims ... more In this reading, writing, and computer-intensive class, you'll engage in communication that aims to clearly and concisely transmit complex information to both experts and nonexperts. This practice will extend across multiple genres, such as emails, memos, resumes, cover letters, transmittal letters, progress reports, and terminal reports. The work in this course will focus extensively on communicating through technology.
This class is designed to lead students to examine and interpret communication practices and appl... more This class is designed to lead students to examine and interpret communication practices and apply what they learn to their own written, spoken, and visual compositions. While writing is the core focus of this class, students will also practice composing in other modes, as well. This class will also be focussing on both contextual and textual analysis; class projects will ask them to attend to audience, purpose, context, and text as well as the more traditional Aristotelian appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos. The students will produce texts over a series of drafts in order to hone their skills as thoughtful multimodal communicators.
Corruption and Illiberal Politics in the Trump Era, 2021
Presidential campaign slogans operate as shorthand phrases that succinctly convey a worldview to ... more Presidential campaign slogans operate as shorthand phrases that succinctly convey a worldview to a select set of audiences. In his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Donald J. Trump aroused visions of the American Dream and who might have access to it by using three slogans to summon the idea of a deserving yet overlooked white underclass that had been “left-behind” by an unfairly rewarded and privileged minority that was morally corrupt. The slogans were “Make America Great Again,” “America First,” and “Keep America Great.” These slogans are directly tied to the racist discourses historically associated with the Ku Klux Klan in the United States (1865-present) and the Nazi movements of the 1930s and 1940s in Germany. While the Trump campaign initially concealed as a public secret the alignment of these three slogans with a history of white supremacy, by 2020 they had become outright propaganda for white supremacy. Here, a semiotic analysis exposes the historical connections between these phrases and white supremacist movements and thereby reveals the racist ideologies behind Trump’s vision of a Great America. By demonizing minority groups as backward and morally corrupt, Trump was able to displace his own political corruption onto the “Other.”
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