Photo by Phill Alexander
Phill Alexander
Phill Alexander’s dissertation, titled Individual Copycats: Memetics, Identity, and Collaboration in the World of Warcraft, presents an analysis of participant-observation case studies of the popular Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) World of Warcraft. Alexander investigates how players of this game “utilize memetic practices to build gaming literacies, to author digital identities, and to collaborate to achieve both individual and group goals.” Gaming studies research within a rhetorical setting is something not many researchers choose to focus on, and Alexander hopes that his interest and efforts here will help him to stand out from among his peers. He has begun the job search process while continuing his dissertation work in hopes of finding a job in a university program that focuses on digital rhetoric and has the interest in and potential for digital composition. He jokingly describes himself as “I’m the humanities version of the guys on Big Bang Theory, and I know someone wants that guy [me] to teach in their department.”
Photo by Andrea Riley Mukavetz
Andrea Riley Mukavetz
PHD student Andrea Riley Mukavetz has spent her graduate studies researching with a group of multi-generational American-Indian Odawa women from the Little Traverse Bay Band (LTTB), which has culminated in a dissertation titled Theory Begins with a Story, Too: Listening to the Lived Experiences of American Indian Women. She argues “These stories of lived experiences are important rhetorical theories that show how American Indian women negotiate issues of visibility in their community.” She enacts cultural rhetorical strategies that bring methodologies common to Native studies to impact how we think about “doing” rhetoric. As she continues to refine her dissertation, Riley Mukavetz has applied to 60 jobs, looking for a position in rhetoric & composition, American Indian studies, gender studies, or postcolonial literature and theory. Ultimately, she wants to be at a school with a diverse student population and where she can have the opportunity to work with tribal communities. Her advice for others on the job market is “Divest, don’t obsess….Take the time to develop self-care strategies because it’s the stress that will affect you the most.”
Photo by Gabriel Raquel Rios
Gabriel Raquel Ríos
Gabriela Raquel Ríos is a visiting PHD student from Texas A&M University and is working on her dissertation titled In Ixtli In Yollotl/A (Wise) Face, a (Wise) Heart: (Re)Claiming Embodied Rhetorical Traditions of Anahuac and Twanantinsuyu. She describes the purpose of her dissertation as “a model of relationality that uses Indigenous and decolonial methodologies alongside the Nahua concept of in ixtli in yollotl (a wise face/a wise heart) and embodied rhetorics.” She seeks to apply “thing theory,” which involves understanding objects or cultural artifacts as animated “things” that bear a different relationship to different bodies and “nature.” This allows for a connection between language, material artifacts, and images without the use of a text-based model. As Ríos continues to finish her dissertation, she has applied to 40 jobs so far with plans to continue applying to more. She is particularly intrigued by positions that include opportunities for civic engagement and non-western rhetorics. In each job application Ríos sends out, she conveys that her research with indigenous rhetorics “can actually help us to answer some tough questions regarding issues like biodiversity and sustainability.”
Photo by Travis Webster
Travis Webster
In Travis Webster’s dissertation titled What Ex-Ex-Gays Can Teach Us About Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Rhetorics, he traces gay, lesbian, and queer rhetoric to different online communities that oppose and speak out against sexual conversion practices. He says, “I argue that participants’ stories point back to rhetorical responsibilities of GLQ resistances and activisms.” The overall goal of his research and work is to respond to homophobic institutions by connecting resistances and activism from the early years of the “AIDS crisis” to a twenty-first century context of gay suicides and bullying. He hopes that his research as well as his experience as a “scholar who does queer rhetorics research” will bring a unique positionality and his particular research’s spirit to any job he may have. Webster has been diligently applying to numerous positions and hopes to find a position where he can teach advanced undergraduate rhetoric and writing courses with the opportunity to get involved in program curriculum development.
This is part two of a two-part feature about the 2012 R&W PHD cohort.
