The Composition and Rhetoric program prepares M.A. and Ph.D. students for a wide array of professional and personal opportunities. UNL's Composition and Rhetoric faculty collaborate on a variety of teaching, research, and outreach projects while also exploring diverse individual interests. This community supports our best work, and it is the kind of community we hope to offer those who come to work with us. We believe teachers and scholars need multiple opportunities to
- study and practice writing in multiple contexts for diverse audiences,
- to reflect on one’s own writing and reading processes,
- develop awareness of writing and reading as cognitive and social processes,
- explore the history of rhetoric and how rhetoric functions in contemporary society,
- examine how literacy functions in various home, school, and community contexts,
- form productive learning communities with other writers, readers, and teachers.
Toward these ends, our graduate program in composition and rhetoric offers a generalist M.A. and an individually-tailored Ph.D. program. There are no core or required courses at the Ph.D. level. Ph.D. students design an individual program of study with faculty in their area(s) of interest. For comprehensive exams, Ph.D. students develop a field list in the area of composition and rhetoric and a focus list for a particular topic in that area (e.g. community literacy, feminist and multicultural pedagogies, etc.). Ph.D. Students also are required to demonstrate proficiency in two languages (other than English) or one language with a collateral field outside of the English Department (e.g. Education, community and regional planning, sociology, communications studies, etc.) Interests we pursue include the following:
- Assessment and School Reform
- Creative Nonfiction
- Critical Pedagogy
- Community Literacy Practices
- Professional Discourses (of medicine, law, religion)
- Teacher Inquiry/Ethnography
- Rhetoric of Women Writers
- Place-Based Education
- History of Composition
- Writing Centers
- Writing in the Disciplines
