Event Preview: Writing and Rhetoric Across Borders with Dr. Caroline Gottschalk Druschke

This Winter Quarter the Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse department is offering a particularly special guest speaker in our Writing & Rhetoric Across Borders series. Dr. Caroline Gottschalk Druschke is joining us from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to share her work in oral history. Her presentation “Living Well with Floods: Reciprocity, Research, and Refusal in Wisconsin’s Hill Country” gives a glimpse into stories she’s collected around dealing with ever-increasing floods and the mutual aid that takes place after disaster strikes.  Dr. Gottschalk Druschke is well-versed in ecological and water-based rhetoric as they have been focuses of hers for years. In fact,

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Course Spotlight — WRD 507: Global Englishes

Note: This post was updated in January, 2024. This Spring Quarter, Dr. Jason Schneider is teaching one of his favorite courses—WRD 507 Global Englishes. This course showcases the vast variations in the English language across the world and the forces that have made English both a modern lingua franca and a language expressed in many different ways around the world. For students interested in linguistics, language teaching, and the political histories that shape our communication, this class is an opportunity to engage with English on an entirely new playing field. “In the broadest sense, the course offers a way to

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Faculty Achievement Spotlight: Monica Reyes

In October 2021, Professor Monica Reyes of the Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse program was awarded a fellowship to further her Shelter Rhetorics manuscript. The grant was awarded through the American Association of University Women. Her manuscript is a timely piece that looks to engage a dialogue around the rhetorics of displacement and asylum. This work is vital to Dr. Reyes’ scholarship as she helps students navigate through these kinds of rhetorics in her classes. In the last three years, she has taught two separate, service-learning courses that highlight “countering the predominant victim narrative we often hear about asylum experience.” For

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Course Spotlight: LSP 200 Border Culture

This quarter Dr. Lydia Saravia is teaching LSP 200 Border Cultures which has been focused on examining the political climate between the U.S. and Mexico borders. Her class recently worked with local artist Norma Sierra Rios to host a celebration of Dia de Los Muertos. The celebration was also held in collaboration with the Logan Square Neighborhood Association.  Q: How did you find Norma Sierra Rios? A: Norma is an established local artist. She has worked with several organizations and Chicago Public Schools. In addition to her mosaic art pieces that can be seen around Chicago, Norma is known for

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Sharing Your Truth: Publishing a Personal Essay

This blog was written during Asexuality Awareness Week 2021, October 24-30.  At the start of 2020 I pitched a personal essay story to the Huffington Post personal section. It was an essay outlining my discovery of Demisexuality* and how that discovery impacted me as a person. I thought a few people would read it before life went on. What I didn’t expect was for the article to go viral during the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, or to see my face on other media platforms’ homepages sent in screenshots from friends around the world, or to be inundated with

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