Center for Writing Studies at Illinois

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Center for Writing Studies at Illinois

For graduate students pursuing M.A. or Ph.D. degrees in participating departments, the Center offers a program leading to a concentration in Writing Studies.

The Center for Writing Studies is an interdisciplinary unit at the U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign that sponsors research and teaching about writing and sustains a community of scholars in Writing Studies. The Center for Writing Studies is an interdisciplinary academic unit at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that facilitates research and promotes graduate study in the areas of written composition, language, literacy, and rhetoric. Faculty and graduate students from several departments across the University comprise the Center and come together to attend courses, discuss teaching, share research, and participate in the Center's colloquia. For a list of the Center's graduates and placements, please visit http://www.cws.illinois.edu/people/alumni/

03/11/2024

The Center for Writing Studies at Illinois invites you to its reception at the 2024 CCCC Convention: Thursday, April 4, 6:00-8:00 pm at the Davenport Grand Hotel, Room 11, Second Floor (333 W. Spokane Falls Blvd., Spokane, Washington).

We’ll honor the life and career of Dr. Gail Hawisher (1943–2023), CWS’s founding director.

CWS is well represented on the Cs Convention program. See this listing of 33 faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and alumni who will be presenting papers, speaking at roundtables, and leading workshops: https://cws.illinois.edu/news/2024-03-05t213156/center-writing-studies-2024-cccc-convention-spokane

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer: Hawisher in 2005, when Illinois recognized her as a Distinguished Teacher-Scholar. Image description: Hawisher sits at the edge of table in a campus computer lab; she smiles and is wearing a black suit over a white shirt.

04/26/2023

This Thursday and Friday, April 27th and 28th, The Center for Writing Studies will host the 13th annual Gesa E. Kirsch Graduate Student Symposium!

The Symposium will take place on campus, in room 1005 of the Beckman Institute from 9:00am-3:00pm on Thursday and from 8:30am-5:30pm on Friday, followed by a celebration to take place at Murphy's pub starting immediately after the closing remarks on Friday. See the attached program for more details.

We hope to see you there!

02/11/2023

CWS at the 2023 CCCC Annual Convention
February 15–18, Chicago

On the program:
+ 9 current doctoral students
+ 31 doctoral alumni
+ 7 faculty, staff, and friends

Details:

04/29/2022

Join us for day 2 of the 12th Annual Gesa E. Kirsch Graduate Student Symposium! We will be in the Lucy Ellis Lounge, Room 1080, of the Foreign Languages Building until 5, at which point we will head to Murphy's Pub for a celebratory happy hour.
Email our ADs Finola McMahon ([email protected]) and Megan Mericle ([email protected]) for the zoom link.

04/28/2022

Today marks the beginning of the 12th Annual Gesa E. Kirsch Graduate Student Symposium! Come join us in the Lucy Ellis Lounge, Room 1080, of the Foreign Languages Building for our first day of workshops.

Today’s events will include:
• 8:45am-9:30am: catered breakfast
• 9:30am-11:00am: Dr. Johnathan W. Stone’s Workshop: "Resounding History: Sound, Rhetoric, and Archival Methods”
• 11:30am-12:15pm: Megan Mericle's Workshop: "Exploring Expertise in Writing Studies: A Mini-Workshop on Graduate Student Experiences & Mentoring”
(all times listed in CST)

If you are unable to attend in person, you can also join us through zoom, email our ADs Finola McMahon ([email protected]) and Megan Mericle ([email protected]) for the link.

03/31/2022

We celebrate with Dr. María Carvajal Regidor (PhD, 2021), whose dissertation, “‘I’ll Find a Way to Make My Voice Heard’: Transformational Literacies of Latinx Students,” is a winner of the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s 2022 James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award. CCCC Chair Dr. Holly Hassel announced the award on March 11 at the organization’s annual convention. In presenting the award, Dr. Hassel noted that Dr. Carvajal’s dissertation “makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions that add to field’s body of knowledge, including in counterstory, archival and ethnographic research, and in the language and literacy practices—both classroom and extracurricular—and ways of knowing of Latinx students within a specific context. The selection committee admired the care with which this project was undertaken, the use of form to make space for listening, and its powerful and situated call for trauma-informed research practices that was well connected with language and literacy research. In addition, the committee found the project well defined, expressed a clear methodology, and was substantially grounded in the literature of the field, especially Latinx rhetorics, literacy studies, and critical race theory.” Assessing Dr. Carvajal’s achievement, Dr. Hassell quoted the selection committee, which observed that the dissertation “effectively represents ‘a rethinking of current educational practices as they relate to writing, literacies, and language to create more socially and racially just approaches to the teaching of writing and the research that informs it.’” Dr. Carvajal is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Co-Director of the Writing Center at University of Massachusetts Boston. Congratulations, María!

03/29/2022

Remember to join us for the CWS Writing Across the University Panel, this Thursday 3/31 from 12:00-1:30pm CT, to hear panelists from the Writers Workshop, the HDFS Peer Mentor Program, the iSchool Writing Resources & the ECE Composition Program discuss their units’ work with student writers!

Panelists include:
- Carolyn Wisniewski, Director of the Writers Workshop
- Barbara Anderson and Jen Hardesty, Human Development & Family Studies Peer Mentor Program
- Iftikhar Haider, iSchool Writing Resources
- Aaron Geiger, Assistant Director of the Electrical & Computer Engineering Composition Program

Register here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfPvNgdTT4a38V3xm0SJWtgjtJ6FIKynSk0ucOjqYSJSNyyrg/viewform?usp=sf_link__;!!DZ3fjg!qnzcPZ_ua_2ePHQL9Y5YRVy5TeVbx3P3KK-4eeJ2mB45Vx2mDfCesfJfObMucd_pwBLu2v5ySg$

03/23/2022

We’re thrilled to announce that Charlesia McKinney will soon join our core faculty in the Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her appointment begins August 16, pending Board of Trustees approval. McKinney is currently completing her dissertation, “Giving Us Something We Can Feel: Investigating the Politics of Pleasure via Literacy in the Lives of Black Women,” in the Department of English at the University of Kansas. This year she holds a dissertation fellowship at Middle Tennessee State University, where she is a Lecturer in the Department of English. McKinney’s most recent academic publication is “Reassessing Intersectionality: Affirming Difference in Higher Education,” a review essay that appeared in a 2018 special issue of Composition Forum devoted to disability studies. In January, she participated in a Podcasting the Humanities institute offered by the National Humanities Center. Welcome Charlesia McKinney!

12/20/2021

Winter break reading suggestions. Some new, some classic. More about our alumni here: https://cws.illinois.edu/directory/alumni-0

11/11/2021

Working with a student who wishes to pursue a graduate degree in Writing Studies? Ask them to consider the Graduate Concentration in Writing Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The concentration can be earned with the doctorate in one of five academic programs across campus. Details at go.illinois.edu/ApplyWritingStudies, where there’s also information about Writing Studies specializations at the master’s level in English and Linguistics.

09/27/2021

The Department of English at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is pleased to announce a search for a tenure-track assistant professor in writing studies. Please share widely.

Assistant Professor, Writing Studies, Department of English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The Department of English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor in Writing Studies. Applicants must have a promising research agenda and a strong commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. The successful applicant will have a PhD or equivalent degree in English or another academic area recognized as contributing to the interdisciplinary field of Writing Studies. Once hired, the successful applicant will be expected to teach effectively at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, establish and maintain an active and independent research program, and provide service to the department, the university, and the profession.

We are especially interested in applicants whose scholarship and teaching focus at least in part on multimodal, professional, technical, and/or digital writing. We prefer applicants to have demonstrated a compelling commitment to scholarship and teaching that ethically represents persons whose humanity has been historically diminished or denied by predominantly white institutions such as the university. We will be open to evidence of scholarly engagement in many forms. We appreciate that effective teaching can be documented in a variety of ways and in a wide range of settings.

The successful applicant will bring their scholarly and instructional expertise into conversation with faculty and graduate students affiliated with the Center for Writing Studies (https://cws.illinois.edu). The Center was established in 1992 to foster interdisciplinary research on writing and to support writers and writing instruction across the disciplines. Among current initiatives is to design undergraduate coursework in the English major that prepares graduates to write professionally in a broad array of settings.

See the Illinois Human Resources Academic Job Board posting (position 153520) for details: https://jobs.illinois.edu/academic-job-board/job-details?jobID=153520&job=college-of-liberal-arts-sciences-assistant-professor-department-of-english-153520. For full consideration, apply by November 1, 2021.

04/06/2021

Information about the 2021
Gesa E. Kirsch Symposium
is coming soon!

Address

Champaign, IL
61820

Website

http://www.cws.illinois.edu/

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