last updated January 16, 2021
D.T. McCormick
mccormid@purdue.edu
Lafayette / West Lafayette IN
Education
Ph.D., English • Purdue University • August 2022
Concentration: Rhetoric and Composition
Secondary Areas: Public Rhetorics; Queer and Trans Rhetorics; Rhetorics of Health and Medicine; Rhetorical Theory and Philosophy
Dissertation: Persuasive Substances: Transdisciplinary Rhetorics of Drugs and Recovery in the Rise and Decline of Psychedelic Therapy
Director: Thomas Rickert
Committee: Patricia Sullivan, Jennifer Bay, Harry Denny, Karen Kopelson
M.A., English • University of Louisville • May 2015
Concentration: Rhetoric and Composition
Culminating Project: “Decomposing Student Bodies: Difference and Vulnerability in the Composition Classroom”
Director: Bruce Horner
B.A., English • Hanover College • May 2013
Minor: Philosophy
Publications
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
“Happiness, Biopolitics, and Transmedicine’s Necessary Contradiction: Rhetorics of Normalcy and the Narratives of Gender Transition.” Peitho, vol. 22 no. 4, Summer 2020.
Chapters in Edited Collections
“The Stakes of Will: Persuasion and Its Aftermath in The Transformation.” The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric. Edited by Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes. Routledge, 2022.
Mentoring and Administration
Online Course Coordinator • Summer 2020 – Summer 2021
In this writing program position, I manage the training and resources for the online sections of first-year writing. This includes developing and maintaining the course LMS page, assignment prompts, rubrics, and other shared material. I also helped facilitate a change of LMS platform (Blackboard to Brightspace), and I helped manage the shift to primarily hybrid and remote instruction due to COVID-19.
Technology Mentor • Fall 2018 – Spring 2020
In this writing program position, I provided weekly workshops on technological tools and pedagogical concerns for two graduate instructor practicums. I also provided mentoring and assistance on technology and multimodal pedagogy to all writing program instructors. This included maintaining and continuing to develop an online repository of classroom resources and technology guides, as well as occasional public workshops on digital tools used for professionalization, including MS Word, Adobe InDesign, and website creation platforms such as WordPress.
Curriculum Development
English 106-DIST Online Introductory Composition • Fall 2019 – Spring 2020
As part of my role as Technology Mentor, I helped revise the curriculum guidelines for the online version of Purdue’s first-year writing course, 106-DIST (formerly 106-Y). We updated the guidelines for choosing a sequence of assignment to allow more flexibility, provided new instructions for teaching a final portfolio assignment that would be collected as part of a programmatic assessment, and developed new training materials for first-time instructors of the course.
Academic Writing and Research Syllabus Approach • Spring 2018
Due to my familiarity with this approach, I was asked to help complete the renewal request for the Academic Writing and Research syllabus approach. I collaborated on a document that outlined the goals of the approach, suggested texts and readings, and provided a basic sequence of assignments that instructors could use, along with sample syllabi and assignment prompts. I then presented this document to the Introductory Writing Committee and successfully advocated for the renewal.
Introduction to the Medical Humanities • Fall 2017 – Spring 2018
Working with a faculty sponsor and another graduate student, I helped develop a proposal for an undergraduate course in the English department that would serve as an introduction to a medical humanities minor. I reviewed texts and readers in medical and health humanities, developed a sequence of assignments and samples of a syllabus and assignment prompts, and helped complete administrative documentation for the proposal.
Service
Introductory Writing Committee • Fall 2020 – Present
As a member of this committee on first-year writing instruction, I participate in discussions of the writing program’s goals, means, and outcomes. As a member of the Textbook Subcommittee, I communicate with representatives from publishing companies to review textbooks for their potential use in first-year writing courses, and I participate in discussions with other members of the subcommittee on how these new books will help us further develop our program’s curriculum and structure of syllabus themes.
Advanced Writing Committee • Fall 2019 – Spring 2020
As a graduate student representative, I helped develop advanced undergraduate curriculum in rhetoric and composition, providing a graduate student perspective on how proposed courses in a rhetoric and composition minor could provide new teaching opportunities for faculty and graduate students.
Medical Humanities Film Series Committee • Summer – Fall 2019
In coordination with other events and performances covering the continuing history of the HIV-AIDS epidemic, I worked with other English department faculty on planning and presenting a series of films featuring this issue. After discussing how to ensure a list of films that would be representative of the
global impact of HIV-AIDS, we acquired, publicized, and facilitated introductions and discussions for these public screenings.
Teaching Experience
Purdue University
English 108-S Accelerated Introductory Composition with Service Learning • 1 section
For this service-learning-oriented course, I created a themed sequence of readings and assignments that asked students to engage with the conversation concerning sexual violence on college campuses. As a part of this sequence, we worked with Purdue’s Center for Advocacy, Response, and Education (CARE) to learn about and then inquire into how CARE responds to this problem, how Purdue students perceive this issue in their own lives, and what possibilities exist for increasing education and understanding on campus.
English 106-Y Online Introductory Composition • 1 section
This eight-week, asynchronous course used the “Academic Writing and Research” approach, introducing students to the fundamental practices of research-based writing, including an analysis of a scholarly article, a researched argument, and a research poster. I facilitated weekly reading discussions through the course LMS page, and I wrote and filmed short videos introducing concepts and assignments for each week, in addition to reading and responding to students’ writing.
English 106 Introductory Composition • 2 section
Using the syllabus approach “Academic Writing and Research,” this course introduced first-year students to the most common genres and practices of academic discourse. I covered summarizing, analyzing, and evaluating texts, leading up to a final researched argument and research poster.
University of Louisville
English 102 Intermediate College Writing • 6 sections
This second-semester FYC course emphasized writing based in research. I covered the research process in depth, including development of research questions, gathering and evaluating scholarly and popular sources, and creating an argument based in evidence. For two sections, I developed and taught a Wikipedia-themed course, focusing our reading and discussion on issues of knowledge access and online collaborative writing as a way to help students engage with the course’s emphasis on making judgments about authority and expertise.
English 101 Introduction to College Writing • 2 sections
This course for first-year/first-semester students took the form of four genre-based units and a final portfolio. I covered narrative, critical reading strategies, rhetoric and argument, and the research process.
Writing Center Experience
University of Louisville
Writing Center Consultant • 2 semesters
As a first-year M.A. student, my graduate assistantship gave me the opportunity to gain experience as a consultant for the University Writing Center, where I worked with writers of many different levels and backgrounds: undergraduate, graduate, faculty, non-traditional, and international/ELL. I participated in a writing center practicum and developed skills in facilitating the writing process with clients through invention work, discussion of instructor feedback and revision, and language concerns.
Conference Presentations
“Rhetorical Problems of Medicalization and Transgender Representation.” Rhetorical Society of America Conference, Portland OR, May 2020. Cancelled due to COVID-19.
“Documenting Experience Neurorhetorically: Administration of Substances and Observations of Sensation in the Papers of Psychiatric Researcher Charles Savage.” Rhetorical Society of America Conference, Portland OR, May 2020. Cancelled due to COVID-19.
“Affect and Inclusion in the Emergence and Early History of Alcoholics Anonymous.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, Milwaukee WI, Mar. 2020. Cancelled due to COVID-19.
“Love-Sickness and Affective Entanglements of Queer and Heterosexual Forms-of-Life.” Cultural Rhetorics Conference, Michigan State University, Nov. 2018.
“Developmental Rhetorics and Pedagogies of the National Body.” Thomas R. Watson Conference, University of Louisville, Oct. 2018.
“Self-Care Practices and Self/Care Rhetorics.” Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Minneapolis MN, May 2018.
“Competence, Value, and Rhetorics of Risk Management: Gatekeeping and Financial Logics in Higher/Continuing/Adult Education.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, Kansas City MO, Mar. 2018.
“Encountering Historical Trauma in Two Forms of Narrative Knowledge: African American Women’s Witnessing of Sexual Violence and Its Psychotherapeutic Response.” Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference, University of Dayton, Oct. 2017.
“Locating Queer Writing in/as Failure.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, Portland OR, Mar. 2017.
“Considering Queer Objects, or Failing to Pass (through) Composition.” Thomas R. Watson Conference, University of Louisville, Oct. 2016.
“Toward an Ontology of Student Texts.” Thomas R. Watson Conference, University of Louisville, Oct. 2014.
“Literacy Practices of Kentucky Health Justice Network.” Rethinking Intellectual Activism Conference, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Apr. 2014
“The Man-Child in Knocked Up, Step Brothers, and Workaholics.” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, Feb. 2014.
Honors and Awards
Ross Fellowship, Purdue University • Aug. 2016
Dorothy Bucks English Award, Hanover College • Apr. 2013
Creative Writing Award, Hanover College • Apr. 2013
Professional Affiliations
Rhetoric Society of America
Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine
National Council of Teachers of English
Deanna Tomasin McCormick 