WELCOME TO THE GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN WRAC

The graduate programs in WRAC aim to prepare the next generation of leaders, thinkers, teachers, and innovators in the discipline of rhetoric and writing and in related fields both inside and outside of academia. Our goal is to serve as a model for a new vision of humanities scholars and professional practitioners. 

This vision guides our recruitment, our curriculum, our support packages, and our mentoring philosophy. It asks a lot of both students and faculty, but it also makes the program an exciting place to be.

Because we aim to create an innovative and energetic environment for research, teaching, and community engagement, we offer a broad array of curricular, co-curricular, extra-curricular, and community engagement opportunities, and a nationally renowned faculty who enjoy working with students as they become our colleagues and peers.

The graduate programs in WRAC aim to prepare the next generation of leaders, thinkers, teachers, and innovators in the discipline of rhetoric and writing and in related fields both inside and outside of academia. Our goal is to serve as a model for a new vision of humanities scholars and professional practitioners.

This vision guides our recruitment, our curriculum, our support packages, and our mentoring philosophy. It asks a lot of both students and faculty, but it also makes the program an exciting place to be.

Because we aim to create an innovative and energetic environment for research, teaching, and community engagement, we offer a broad array of curricular, co-curricular, extra-curricular, and community engagement opportunities, and a nationally renowned faculty who enjoy working with students as they become our colleagues and peers.

We have strong interdisciplinary ties to other programs and research centers at MSU, especially to African American and African StudiesAmerican Indian and Indigenous StudiesAsian Pacific American StudiesChicano/Latina StudiesCultural Heritage InformaticsDigital Humanities @ CAL; the Digital Media Arts and Technology Lab; the Eli and Edythe Broad Art MuseumMATRIX (the Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online); the MSU Museum; the Native American Institute; the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH); Teacher Education; the Center for Gender in a Global Context; the Writing Center; and the Writing, Information, and Digital Experience (WIDE) Research Center.

The intellectual community of the programs offer students a unique academic space to explore scholarly, intellectual, and pedagogical pathways in and beyond the traditionally understood provenance of rhetoric and composition studies. Because encouraging these kinds of risks requires a strong supportive network of colleagues and mentors, we work hard to provide an intellectual community that seeks out and welcomes all individuals, and that openly makes space for the broadest possible spectrum of diversity across categories of age, life experience, gender, abilities, race, ethnicity, class, religion, spirituality, sexual orientation, and geographic identification. We attract strong students from all walks of life, and we are excited about the possibilities that arise from each cohort’s arrival in the program. Every member of our academic community has something important to contribute to our intellectual community and to the future of our discipline.

The intellectual community of the programs offer students a unique academic space to explore scholarly, intellectual, and pedagogical pathways in and beyond the traditionally understood provenance of rhetoric and composition studies. Because encouraging these kinds of risks requires a strong supportive network of colleagues and mentors, we work hard to provide an intellectual community that seeks out and welcomes all individuals, and that openly makes space for the broadest possible spectrum of diversity across categories of age, life experience, gender, abilities, race, ethnicity, class, religion, spirituality, sexual orientation, and geographic identification. We attract strong students from all walks of life, and we are excited about the possibilities that arise from each cohort’s arrival in the program. Every member of our academic community has something important to contribute to our intellectual community and to the future of our discipline.

“Every member of our academic community has something important to contribute to our intellectual community and to the future of our discipline.”

msu library

The graduate programs in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRAC) have a complicated history. Founded in 2002 as an independent graduate-level Rhetoric and Writing (RW) Program in the College of Arts & Letters (CAL), we mark our formal beginnings in Fall 2003, when our first five RW PhD students and seven Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing (DRPW) MA students began their studies at MSU. Since that time, our program—and our national reputation—has quickly grown.

In 2004, the English department’s Critical Studies in the Teaching of English (CSTE) program joined us and became the Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy (CSLP) MA program and PhD concentration. In 2010, we joined the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, which is home to the Professional Writing undergraduate major and to the university’s first-year writing program.

Today, our graduate programs include two MA degree programs—CSLP and DRPW—and the PhD in Rhetoric and Writing. As a community of about 60 diverse graduate students and nearly 30 diverse and interdisciplinary graduate program faculty, we work together to create knowledge that will change our discipline and transform the world in which we live.

After more than 15 years in existence, our programs are thriving; collectives, research clusters, and writing groups are constantly being formed to promote collaborative scholarship among students and between faculty and students. These collaborations have resulted in dozens of conference presentations (and other speaking engagements), workshops, grant proposals, articles, book chapters, and books. Many members of our community have graduated and moved on to college, university, and industry employment and to other graduate programs.

As we look forward to our future as a program, we remain invested in building and maintaining a visionary, innovative space for knowledge-making—a process of reflection and revision that always includes graduate student input and collaborative practices of innovation.

As we look forward to our future as a program, we remain invested in building and maintaining a visionary, innovative space for knowledge-making—a process of reflection and revision that always includes graduate student input and collaborative practices of innovation.