Conferences and Publications

Conferences & Publications

Conference Presentations & Lectures

Presenter. “Writing, Re-Vision, and Making Bigger Plans: The Surprising Synergy of a Self-Editing Assignment in an Undergraduate English Editing Course.” College English Association. March 28, 2019. New Orleans, Louisiana.

This paper explores ways in which a broadly-aimed “Self-Editing” assignment given in GSU’s “Editing for Publication” course (ENGL 3140) offers its participants the opportunity to not only revise one of their previous written works in order to strengthen fundamentals like grammar and style, but also to reimagine the overall rhetorical context for the piece, refocusing it for a new (ideally practical) purpose that has some personal relevance given their near-term future plans. Many times, the result of this endeavor has seen students undertake a deeply reflective effort that compels them to consider, perhaps more thoughtfully than before, their lives after college and the various roles that written communication might play in their respective futures. Connecting real-life exigencies with their writing can help supercharge engagement and enhance learning, as these upper-level undergraduate students find a new interest in grammar and mechanics when they begin to fully grasp the degree to which these “small things” can affect the rhetorical effectiveness they must effectively leverage in order to successfully achieve their “bigger plans.”

Co-Organizer and Panelist. “Questioning, Listening, Learning, and Repeating: How Kinetic Language Feedback Dynamics Enhance Rhetorical Awareness in Writing and Editing Course Classrooms.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. March 14, 2018. Kansas City, Missouri

This concurrent session featured three presentations hinging on the rhetorically minded cooperative language ecology practiced by teachers and students for first-year composition and upper-level editing courses. Each presentation was situated via the interrelated laboring and languaging processes performed by instructor and student and was contextualized via a kinetic language feedback dynamic: the shared, reciprocal understanding of the rhetorical situation’s impact on effective composition instruction and student writing. Panelists viewed the linguistic effort, creation, querying, and reflection of meaning-making and language construction as laboring during the instruction and practice of rhetorically minded writing habits—work that occurs recursively throughout the writing process. To address this recursive nature, the session addressed research methods and editing practices, exemplified by three related audience activities. The above paper expanded the panel’s focus from rhetorically minded research in FYC courses to rhetorically minded editing. It asserted that instructors must provide students with the framework they need to “enter into the conversation” and to become effective communicators. Today, with the added dynamic of an increasing number of hybrid/online courses, peer editing often does not produce beneficial results for students. Many students claim that while they understand the theoretical underpinnings of peer editing, they often doubt the efficacy of the exercise because of the inconsistent nature of the feedback received. To improve the peer editing end-product, this paper recommends a reconceptualization of peer editing as “peer questioning,” thus creating an environment in which students learn how to “edit” a paper by asking questions about the author’s original purpose and intent.

Panelist. “The Literacy Myth, Critical Literacy, and Composition Pedagogy.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association. November 6, 2016. Jacksonville, Florida.

Although he does not use the terms “utopia” and “dystopia,” Dr. Harvey J. Graff, in the introduction of Literacy and Historical Development, links literacy to these ideas when he argues that literacy is believed to be a deciding element in contemporary culture if a person is to be accomplished, profitable, healthy, able to grow and develop, and engaged in a free and modern society. New Literacy Studies, according to Graff, is a reaction to “literature” which “place[s] literacy squarely among the requisites for progress” and “assume[s] its key relationship are simple, linear, and direct, and its impact [is] universally powerful.” This panel explored pedagogical approaches of and theoretical underpinnings to New Literacy and investigated ways to counter literacy myths and their consequences. As conveyed by the paper above, the second half of the Twentieth Century saw the field of literacy studies embrace expansive perspectives brought forth by a myth-exposing (and myth-exploding) influx of interdisciplinarity. Suddenly, a relatively simple idea took on dramatic new importance as literacy's transformative potential was conceptualized and explicated in a plethora of unique and compelling ways by scholars of widely varied backgrounds. While "New Literacy Studies" (NLS) could and did call home to a number of academic disciplines ranging from psychology to sociology and history to linguistics, it is arguably most originally situated in the English department, and more specifically, the composition classroom. This presentation utilized David Barton's "ecology theory" of literacy and literacy practices as an "NLS tour guide" to help navigate the sometimes nebulous connections which can often render dystopian the literacy studies landscape to the practically minded educator. Stops along this “tour” included current pedagogical applications of NLS, including social literacies, community literacies, and critical literacies, with new takes on each of these applications presented by the panelists that followed.

Invited Guest Lecturer. Dr. Lynée Lewis Gaillet’s Writing & Research Methodology seminar (ENGL 8125). “Implementing Archival Research Methodology.” Georgia State University. October 15, 2015. Atlanta, Georgia.

As a guest lecturer in this doctoral course, I explained several of the archival research projects I completed in my own Ph.D. coursework and in associated directed studies over the previous three years. In doing so, I endeavored to foreground the various archival research methodologies (and methods with those methodologies) that I used in my work in order to make connections between the student’s methodological coursework related to archival inquiry. After my presentation, an enlightening question-and-answer session took place where even more connections were made between primary source research theory and actual practice.

Co-Organizer and Panelist. “Appropriating Past Graduate Coursework for Conference Presentations: Seizing Your Program's Ready-Made Synergy to Build Your CV and Develop Your Professional Network.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association. November 8, 2014. Atlanta, Georgia.

This panel sought to explicate the ways that a number of graduate students had in the past and were continuing to leverage their program experience to prepare themselves for their upcoming forays into the academic job market. The above paper described, among other things, the expansion of a 750-word “microstudy” into a conference proposal and, ultimately (once accepted), to a conference paper presentation.

Invited Guest Lecturer. Dr. Lynée Lewis Gaillet’s Composition Pedagogy seminar (ENGL 8195). “Teaching the Rhetorical Situation.” Georgia State University. September 22, 2014. Atlanta, Georgia.

As a guest presenter in this course, I discussed how the “rhetorical triangle” model derived from Aristotlean rhetoric can be augmented via the concepts of situational rhetoric explicated in Lloyd Bitzer’s 1967 Philosophy & Rhetoric article “The Rhetorical Situation.” I then explained how I teach this concept via a relevant, participative example in class. Finally, I described the corresponding in-class exercise I have students complete after the lesson, inviting the graduate students in this Composition Pedagogy class to complete it themselves.

Presenter. “D.A.R.E. to Be Definitive: How Two Milestone Dictionaries Have Helped America Negotiate Shifting Lexical Contexts.” Georgia Philological Association (GPA). May 16, 2014. Waycross, Georgia.

Noah Webster established a “standard” American English via his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. Though imperfect, it represented a foundation for a definitively American lexicon because it corralled the nation’s most essential words, giving them definite, relevant meanings. Over time, multiple factors necessitated a more regionally- and culturally-contextualized sorting of American English. Frederic Cassidy’s 1985 Dictionary of American Regional English (D.A.R.E.) began addressing this need by placing the often-diffuse meanings of American words in modern contexts. By comparing Webster’s and Cassidy’s philosophies and intents, the above conference paper explicated how these seminal works’ impacts illuminate the ways that language variation has affected American English.

Attendee. “Inciting the Social Imagination: Education Research for the Public Good.” American Educational Research Association (AERA). April 8-12, 2011. New Orleans, Louisiana.

Barely a year into my first adjunct teaching job, I attended this conference with my teacher-scholar wife, Dr. Rebecca L. Gammill, as a way to preview what a major academic conference was all about. By attending conference panels (my wife’s as well as others) and the plenary session, I was able to learn more about the expectations and conventions involved in sharing ideas within professional academic discourse.

Panelist. “International Association of Business Communicators 2006 Job Shadow Day Experiences.” Kennesaw State University Conference for English Professionals. April 3, 2007. Kennesaw, Georgia.

During my M.A. in Professional Writing program at Kennesaw State University, my two goals were to become a better writer and to explore all the various career options open to someone with a professional writing degree. To help fulfill the latter objective, I signed up for the International Association of Business Communicators’ annual Job Shadow Day in 2006, during which time I moved from department to department at Hewitt Associates, a major human capital and management consulting firm, getting an up-close view of professional writing tasks this company handled for its clients. The panel above, organized by KSU’s Dr. Beth Giddens, served as an opportunity for those of us who participated in the Job Shadow Day to share our experiences with others during a small academic conference the KSU English Department held in April of the following year.

Publications

Ed. On Archival Research. (Eds. Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Helen Diana Eidson, and Don Gammill, Jr.). Landmark Essays Series. Routledge. 2016.

Landmark Essays on Archival Research gathers over twenty years of essays addressing archival research methodologies and methods. They give readers a sense of how scholars have articulated archival research over the last two decades, providing insight into the shifts research methods have undergone given emerging technologies, changing notions of access, emerging concerns about issues of representation, fluid definitions of what constitutes an archive, and the place of archival research in hybrid research methods. This collection explores archival research involving a range of disciplinary interests, and will be of interest to scholars working on topics related to postmodern, feminist, working class, and cultural issues. With archival research now ubiquitous, illustrated by the recent number of published collections, journal articles, conference sessions, and pedagogical treatises devoted to the topic, this volume appeals to a broad range of scholarly fields and areas of study. Primary, archival investigation leads to novel insights and publications, and has a place in most of the research being conducted by compositions and rhetoric scholars. This volume will chart the recent historical trends of archival methodologies and suggest future directions for research.” (From publisher’s website: https://www.routledge.com/Landmark-Essays-on-Archival-Research/Gaillet-Eidson- Jr/p/book/9781138897878)

“Giving Back to the Community” (sidebar anecdote). Scholarly Publication in a Changing Academic Landscape: Models for Success. (Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Letizia Guglielmo). Palgrave MacMillan. 2014.

In addition to conducting most of the final line/copyediting for this short volume, I also authored a sidebar anecdote that detailed the service work I completed by providing a writing workshop for the security department supervisors at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta hotel.

“How I Got Started Writing For The Web.” Georgia Writes! (newsletter for the Georgia Writer’s Association), Spring 2011. (Article)

Based at Kennesaw State University where I did my M.A. work, the Georgia Writer’s Association often turned to current graduate students when searching for content for their newsletter, and some of the popular web articles I had published during my program (primarily automotive reviews for The Truth About Cars website) caught their attention. They asked me to author a brief article about what originally led me to write for online outlets, and this brief piece was the result.