Our central research question: How do texts (digital, print, multimedia, visual, verbal) and related communication practices mediate knowledge and action in a variety of social and professional contexts?
Current Project Summaries:
- The Moral Appeal of Environmental Discourse
Project Team: Bernice Hausman, Clare Dannenberg, Katy Powell, Heidi Lawrence
This project seeks to identify how people make decisions to use energy. We seek to study the interaction of competing influences in order to positively impact energy decisions and behaviors toward greater efficiency and conservation. Read more...
- InVisible Seasons
Producer/Director: Maria Finitzo; Co-Producer: Kelly Belanger; Executive Producer: Gordon Quinn
Under development with Kartemquin Films, this feature-length documentary that will look at how and why change takes place in a democracy by exploring how Title IX has altered the face of sports, and also by understanding the meaning of sports in the American experience. Read more... - Blue Ridge Writing Project
Principal Investigator: Kelly Belanger; Project Co-Director: Aileen Murphy
2009/10 Project Team also includes Brian Gogan, Libby Anthony, Amy Reed
This project brings a National Writing Project site to Virginia Tech and to teachers in the largely rural, economically mixed community of Southwest Virginia. The Blue Ridge Writing Project (BRWP) aims to improve the teaching of writing and the use of writing for all students in all disciplines from kindergarten through university. Read more...
- Construction Accidents in the News: Using Journalism to Improve Safety
Principal Investigator: Bernice Hausman; Co-Principal Investigator: Carolyn Rude; Project Assistant: Ashley Patriarca
This research project will examine reporting on construction accidents and risks in mass media and construction trade publications. Read more...
- Rhetoric and Public Policy Research Group
Project Team: Bernice Hausman, Katy Powell, Clare Dannerberg, Paul Heilker; Carolyn Rude; Carlos Evia; Jim Dubinsky, Kelly Pender, Kelly Belanger, Heidi Lawrence
Our collaborative research group seeks to contribute our expertise in the study of discourse to problems that require insights from the humanities as well as the social and natural sciences. This project is supported by funds from Virginia Tech’s Institute for Society, Culture, and the Environment. Read more....
- Viral Mothers: Breastfeeding in the Age of HIV/AIDS
Author: Bernice Hausman
Viral Mothers addresses and explores current constructions of mothers (through the configurations of risk, purity, denial, and choice) in order to understand the dense cultural meanings evoked by postnatal transmission of HIV. Read more... - Mapping the Research Questions in Technical Communication
Author: Carolyn Rude
The central research question this article poses foregrounds texts, broadly defined as verbal, visual, and multimedia, and the power of texts to mediate knowledge, values, and action in a variety of contexts. Read more... - Reformist Possibilities?: Exploring Writing Program Cross-Campus Partnerships
Authors: Marie Paretti, Lisa McNair, Diana George, Kelly Belanger
This article explores cross-campus partnerships through the lens of an interdisciplinary framework, and it examines the opportunities this lens offers to WPAs, to our collaborators across campus, and to students. Read more... - Research Centers in Rhetoric and Writing: Discovering a Disciplinary Past, Inventing a Future
Author: Brian Gogan, Kelly Belanger, Ashley Patriarca, Megan Fisher
In this article, we examine the history of research organizations in rhetoric and writing studies and assess the present state of these centers. We find that the success of centers’ rhetorical stances and Read more... - Representing Autism
Author: Paul Heilker
This paper examines numerous rhetorical aspects of autism and their complex effects, including the public conflict between autism and autistic communities over who really has the ethical right to speak for people on the autism spectrum. Read more...