Research

My work can also be followed on my Academia.edu page

Books

Editor, Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor in the US, 1830-1950. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. With Jessica Enoch.

Educating the New Southern Woman: Speech, Writing, and Race at the Public Women’s Colleges, 1884-1945. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2014. With Catherine L. Hobbs.

Editor, Rhetoric, History, and Women’s Oratorical Education: American Women Learn to Speak. New York: Routledge, 2013. With Catherine L. Hobbs.

Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873-1947. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. 2010 Outstanding Book Award, Conference on College Composition and Communication.

 

Articles

“‘Crusaders on a Quest for Democracy’: Addie W. Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson’s Black Civic Pedagogy.” Rhetoric Review 42.2 (2023): 59-75.

“Creating Space for Black Women’s Citizenship: African American Suffrage Arguments in the Crisis.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 50.5 (2020): 335-51.

“Who’s Afraid of Facebook? A Survey of Student Online Writing Practices.” College Composition and Communication 72.1 (2020): 4-30. With Jathan Day and Adrienne Raw.

“Going Public in an Age of Digital Anxiety: How Students Negotiate the Topoi of Online Writing Environments.” Composition Forum 41 (2019). With Merideth Garcia and Anna Knutson.

“Teaching Feminist Rhetorical Practices: Beyond Recovery in the Undergraduate Classroom.” Roundtable on “Changing the Landscape: Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, Five Years Later.” Peitho 20.2 (2018): 161-65.

“‘Whose Hair Is It, Anyway?’ Bobbed Hair and the Rhetorical Fashioning of the Modern American Woman.” Peitho 17.2 (2015): 172-99.

“Remapping Revisionist Historiography.” College Composition and Communication 64.1 (2012): 15-34.

“Students Writing Race at Southern Public Women’s Colleges, 1884-1945.” History of Education Quarterly 50.2 (2010): 182-203.

“‘Eve Did No Wrong’: Effective Literacy at a Public College for Women.” College Composition and Communication 61.2 (2009): W177-96.

“Will the Circle Be Broken: The Rhetoric of Complaint against Student Writing.” Profession 2008: 83-93.

“‘But When Do You Teach Grammar?’ Allaying Community Concerns about Pedagogy.” English Journal 95.6 (2006): 42-47.

“‘Where Brains Had a Chance’: William Mayo and Rhetorical Instruction at East Texas Normal College.” College English 67.3 (2005): 311-30.

“‘Nothing Educates Us Like a Shock’: The Integrated Rhetoric of Melvin Tolson.” College Composition and Communication 55.2 (2003): 226-53. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Vol. 88. Ed. Michelle Lee. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 354-67.

“Beyond the Classroom Walls: Student Writing at Texas Woman’s University, 1901-1939.” Rhetoric Review 22.3 (2003): 264-81.

“The Power of Ick; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Teaching English.” The Writing Instructor (2001).

 

Chapters and Book Sections

“Women’s Suffrage: Gender and Citizenship in the Long Nineteenth Century.” Democracies in America. Ed. D. Berton Emerson and Gregory Laski. New York: Oxford UP, 2023: 104-14.

“Writing Instruction in US Colleges and Schools: The Twentieth Century and the New Millennium.” A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to the Modern United States. 4th ed. Ed. James J. Murphy and Christopher Thais. New York: Routledge, 2020. 272-316. With J. W. Hammond.

“Elizabeth Ervin and the Challenge of Civic Engagement: A Composition and Rhetoric Teacher’s Struggle to Make Writing Matter.” Microhistories of Composition. Ed. Bruce McComiskey. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2016. 237-56.

“On Keeping a Beginner’s Mind” [Interview]. Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods in Rhetoric and Composition. Ed. Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa Mastrangelo. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010. 42-44.

“The Accidental Archivist: Embracing Chance and Confusion in Historical Scholarship.” Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process. Ed. Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. 13-19.

Contributor to Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture. Ed. Carol Boyce Davies. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008. Entries include “Melvin Beaunoris Tolson” (889-98), “Frederick Douglass” (397-98).

“Southerners Anonymous.” Crossroads: A Southern Culture Annual, 2006. Ed. Ted Olson. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2006. 3-10.

Principal Contributor to Encyclopedia of African American Society. Ed. Gerald D Jaynes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. Entries include “Activists” (10-13), “Be Bop” (96-98), “Frederick Douglass” (266-69), “Educational Attainment” (284-85), “Fine Arts” (331-33), “Black Media” (529-532), and “Non-Violent Protest” (665-67).

Introductory Essays

“Working Women in(to) Rhetorical History.” Introduction. Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. 3-16. With Jessica Enoch.

“American Women Learn to Speak: New Forms of Inquiry into Women’s Rhetorics.” Introduction. Rhetoric, History, and Women’s Oratorical Education. New York: Routledge, 2013. 1-18. With Catherine L. Hobbs.

“Seizing the Methodological Moment: The Digital Humanities and Historiography in Rhetoric and Composition.” College English 76.2 (2013): 105-14. Editors’ introduction, special issue on rhetorical historiography and the digital humanities. With Jessica Enoch.