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I come to USI from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where I
completed an MA in English with an emphasis in medieval literature and a PhD
in English with a specialization in Rhetoric and Composition. My specialty
teaching area is professional and technical writing. I believe strongly in
the importance of teaching transferable skills for effective, efficient
communication that will help students succeed beyond the classroom, as
professionals and as citizens.
Theoretically, I consider myself a “social cognitivist.” My dissertation
research employed ethnographic methodology to study the metacognitive
processes involved as student writers in an advanced undergraduate
composition course completed a series of analytical and persuasive essays.
Cognition, metacognition, and what I call “non-cognitive factors,” such as
self-efficacy and motivation, are my primary areas of research. I am
currently planning a follow-up study to the dissertation which will further
explore the connections between these three constructs within student
writers’ composing processes.
My other research interests include medical rhetoric and gender studies. I
believe analyzing patient education materials can tell us a great deal about
the sometimes problematic relationship between healthcare providers and
patients; issues of informed consent, universal access to healthcare, and
preventive medicine are all impacted by the way providers and patients
communicate, so I consider this a very important area of research. I also
enjoy researching constructions of gender on-screen, particularly in horror
films, through analysis of the “rhetoric of the body,” or what has been
called bio-horror, that these films enact.
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