Sponsored Projects
Sue Saffle presented a paper on her CSRS-supported project in Reading, England, at "Children in War--A Multidisciplinary Conference." Her paper "Children, War, and the Rhetoric of Remembrance: The Stories of Finland's War Children" was published in 2006 in Children in War: The International Journal of Evacuee and War Child Studies .
Bernice Hausman was also awarded CSRS support, which funded a research assistant's work in Africa collecting public health documents related to infant death, breastfeeding, and AIDs. This research is the basis for a chapter in her forthcoming book, Viral Mothers, which extends her broader interest in discourses about and practices of breastfeeding in contemporary culture.
Peter Graham's work on rhetorical conventions in three bodies of Byron's work is supported by a Center research award, a project that will take him to Venice, Italy, and will be published in an essay for a special edition of the Byron Journal.
Paul Heilker presented his Center-sponsored work in March, 2007, at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in New York. His project, "The Rhetoric of Online Advocacy by Verbal Autistics," seeks to discern the textual practices by which high-functioning, verbal autistics are using the internet to organize and advocate for their perspective on the proper treatment of those with ASDs.
Sue Hagedorn received support for her study, "Creating the American Genome: Nationalistic Metaphors in the Creation of the Human Genome Project." She examines how metaphors of religion (Judeo-Christian) and adventure and discovery (Western expansion) were used to claim that the project should be centered in- and be controlled by-the U.S.
A project by Carlos Evia will focus on Hispanic construction workers' professional rhetoric and communication problems through a series of mini ethnographies.
Along with these individual projects, a grant project originating in the center examines possibilities for reciprocal relationships between English Department composition programs and other programs on campus. Funded by a Writing Program Adminstration grant, Diana George, Kelly Belanger, Marie Paretti, and Lisa McNair are exploring connections between humanistic and technological ways of thinking and seeing the world through a composition classroom-based project for engineering majors.