research


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My research can be loosely grouped into two categories: research on teaching writing (or composition pedagogy, to my fellow writing teachers) and research on identity studies. My work in the former includes my dissertation, numerous conference presentations, and a few publications. I've been working in this area since 1996--the first year I ever attended CCCC! My work in identity studies started around 2000 and I've done fewer presentations and articles in that, but it's a very new field and I enjoy being a pioneer. Since it is so new, I've posted my own ideas about identity studies.

My work in composition pedagogy has mainly focused on Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence theory, multicultural literacies, and non-western rhetoric. You might like to look at my dissertation abstract, the introduction, or my Radical Utopian Afterwards. For more recent work, you might enjoy a paper I've just sent out that considers the Utilitarian roots of western discourse conventions, and compares that most valued quality, clarity, in it's American and Chinese manifestations. Basically, I argue that clarity depends on meeting reader expectations rather than on any particular formal quality, and that no particular flavor is innately superior. While you can see the issue of identity in these pieces, I tackle it head on in other work.

I'm particularly interested in the way people construct personal identity in online communities and have studied how several of these groups empower their members by supporting creation of new, more positive identities than those allowed in mainstream culture. I've made several conference presentations about online communities empowering women and about constructing Asian and other ethnic identities; one, written as a sort of auto-ethnography about Sequential Tart, the online magazine for which I write and its attendant virtual community. The original version of the paper is available at the Media in Transition conference website through MIT program in Comparative Media Studies.