MA and PhD Summer 2025 Fellowships

Tell us about your summer fellowship project!

I am working on a few article projects this summer. One focuses on using computational rhetoric to understand how citational practices differ in articles in Rhetoric Society Quarterly when the author is from an English Department vs a Communication Department vs a Writing/Rhetoric Department vs Others (philosophy, linguistics, etc). This means I've been reading some additional sources on computational rhetoric recommended by some peer reviewers, and working to understand how to adjust my data analysis. The second project I'm working on is writing up my winning SIGDOC student research competition project that focuses on how the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) discuss prenatal genetic testing in their professional documents. This project finds that there is heavy use of "anti-rhetoric," which is a strategy that scientists and other professionals use to try and appear "above persuasion." I'm hoping to have a finalized draft to submit by the end of the summer.

What is your favorite part of RSTC?

I have come to really appreciate the community and opportunities in the RSTC program! The faculty are very supportive and helpful while teaching interesting seminars. They stop to chat in the hallway and are supportive when moving outside the department (for coursework, funding sources, or other programs like 3 Minute Thesis). I've gotten the chance to take a wide variety of classes, but also collaborate with students and faculty on research projects for conferences and publication. Some of the best parts of my day are casual chats in offices in Nolte and I really value that culture in the department!

Tell us about your summer fellowship project!

For my summer fellowship project, I expand work that I began during my technical communication preliminary exam. Here, I proposed that key global events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of social justice movements on social media, and the release of AI tools like ChatGPT, necessitate a new framework for understanding our current “age” in technical communication moving beyond Miles A. Kimball’s (2017) “Golden Age”. Thus, expanding on the work of Nathalie A. Smuha, Jay David Bolter, Richard Grusin, James Beniger, Luciano Floridi, and Corinne Cath, I argue that we have transitioned into a “Generative Age” characterized in part by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the integration of social media in knowledge-sharing, and an increased emphasis on online social justice activism. I have three research questions:

1. How do Kimball’s four “Markers of the Golden Age” (Invisible or Visible, User-Centered or User-Created, Anonymous or Authored, and Controlled or Authentic) hold up in the context of contemporary technological and cultural changes?
2. In what ways does the rise of AI disrupt, challenge, or extend these markers, particularly regarding authenticity and the balance between information and understanding?
3. How does the conceptualization of the “Generative Age” provide a more nuanced framework for addressing these challenges in technical communication?

What is your favorite part of RSTC?

I most like the sense of community and level of care in the RSTC program. I am many states away from where I was born and raised yet our little post in Nolte feels very much like home. I am incredibly thankful for the Writing Studies leadership, the staff and professors as well as my amazing advisor and cohort. Thank you for making my time here so special and fulfilling!

Tell us about your summer fellowship project!

My summer research project explores how hospitals manage patients admitted for social reasons. “Social admission” is a non-diagnostic label assigned to patients who are admitted not for an acute medical need but because they lack sufficient support or arrangements for their social situation. This label may describe unhoused people, older adults without home care, folks waiting to transition to a long-term care facility, and those without a community to care for themselves effectively. My research examines how the social admissions label influences the patient experience from patient-provider interactions to provider documentation and assessment to treatment. More broadly, I am interested in how medical facilities address issues deemed “not medical” and how this complicates our understanding of the purpose and role of hospitals in society. I plan to interview hospital professionals about social admissions and challenges in documenting and caring for complex patient needs.

This project fits into my wider research interest in the rhetoric of health and medicine and disability studies. Rhetoric can illuminate and help us intervene in the real problems vulnerable people face as they navigate the complex world around us.

What is your favorite part of RSTC?

My peers! I’m lucky to learn and work alongside such a motivated and collaborative group of graduate students. Their support and friendship have kept me going throughout my graduate studies.

Tell us about your summer fellowship project!

For my summer fellowship, I am working on my dissertation, titled “Depoliticizing Technical Communication: A Case of Transnational Technical Communication.” My project investigates how Nepali citizens used platforms like Twitter and Reddit to interpret and resist U.S. foreign aid policies—specifically the MCC Nepal Compact—through tactical digital communication practices. Drawing on international and intercultural scholarship in technical and professional communication (TPC) and weaving them into the transnational feminist scholarship, I analyze how grassroots actors engage with genre, discourse, and technological affordances to challenge dominant narratives. This summer, I am writing two key chapters. One chapter explores rhetorical tactics used by Nepalis to resist both U.S. and Nepali government messaging. The second chapter examines how social media architecture becomes a form of experience architecture, addressing gaps in user experience research in TPC—especially in contexts where policy "users" are marginalized publics, not designers

What is your favorite part of RSTC?

There are three things I deeply appreciate about the RSTC program at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities: its strong focus on Technical and Professional Communication, the academic freedom to explore and pursue my own research interests, and the invaluable social support system I found in the program. First, the RSTC program gave me a strong foundation for the kind of research I am doing in my dissertation, which focuses on transnational technical communication—a relatively new and evolving area in the field. The coursework I took directly supported this work and gave me access to emerging conversations and critical theories. Second, the program offered me the freedom and resources to pursue the topics I care about, which allowed me to develop a unique research identity. My advisors have been incredibly supportive throughout this process, encouraging me to pursue original and meaningful work. Lastly, as an international student, the friendships and social connections I made in the program were essential for my well-being. Doing a PhD over several years can be isolating, and the community I found here helped me feel grounded and supported both academically and personally.

Tell us about your summer fellowship project!

My fellowship project focuses on a much needed resource for novice scholars: why do we use the methods we use? There are so many methodologies and methods we learn about in class but it can be overwhelming to figure out the difference between many of them, not to mention similarities across disciplines like communication or linguistics. I am using the approach of Topoi analysis from two different frameworks: Discourse Analysis and Rhetorical Analysis. What are the differences, affordances, and limitations? How do either one of these methods construct our understanding of Topoi and how do you decide which one to use? These are questions I hope to address by doing a comparative analysis of these two methodological frameworks to see how the conclusions and products of DA and RA look when we lay them out next to each other.

What is your favorite part of RSTC?

The RSTC program’s best quality is the willingness of faculty to support graduate students in our work. Some programs rely on graduate students to follow closely in the footsteps of their advisors; in RSTC, my experience has been one where my advisors encourage creative approaches that they may not have 100% familiarity with but they do have 100% willingness to support us in our journey to understand what kind of scholars we want to be both during our project and after we leave

Tell us about your summer fellowship project!

My summer fellowship project is an article that proposes an analogy for teaching critical literacy with the goal of helping students feel capable and hopeful throughout the process, instead of totally disillusioned or helpless. To do this, I endorse a turn in rhetorical theory that says human agency and purpose arises from our entanglement with and reliance on plants, critters, microbes, and bare impulses of affect and desire (Keeling & Prairie, 2018; Jones, 2018). I mobilize the metaphor of a rhetorical ecology, specifically Caroline Gottschalk Druschke's (2019) "trophic" rhetorical ecology, along with materialist rhetoric’s idea of distributed agency (Bennett, 2010; Colebrook, 2008) to propose “rheto-tropism” [rhet-oh / trope-ism]. Rheto-tropism is an analogy that likens humans to plants through the activities of sensing and self-restructuring in response to stimuli that provide nutrients needed to survive. For humans, this would look like self-restructuring to reject or align with specific rhetorics in order to receive particular political and social nutrients that help us live the lives we want to live. As much as we rely on these nutrients to survive, our self-restructuring and consumption of them influences the amount and type available to other beings around us. My hope is that this analogy makes more intuitive the complicated concepts of rhetorical awareness and critical literacy, and supports students in feeling like they understand and can manage important parts of their self-restructuring. The analogy and its theoretical backing is intended to maintain the spirit of resistance fundamental to critical thinking while also requiring us to think of human agency in terms of more-than-human relations and community.

What is your favorite part of RSTC?

Especially as of late, my favorite part of RSTC is its variety in mentorship. My advisors work with me to adapt meeting schedules and modes throughout the year depending on need, preference, and goals, and I truly feel that they trust me as a student and believe in my work as a scholar. Other mentors in the program have answered tons of my questions ad hoc, supported me in making difficult decisions, and encouraged me to explore career options early and often, including via the Humanities Without Walls fellowship workshop. In RSTC, I've always been made to feel like I have a voice, options, and that what truly feels best to me is the right choice.

Tell us about your summer fellowship project!

My summer fellowship project is focused around collecting and analyzing data for my dissertation: an ethnographic case study of paranormal investigation practices. At the highest level this project examines what evidence is, how it is collected, analyzed and communicated, and the roles that technologies play in developing evidentiary knowledge claims. Over the summer I completed two key tasks. First, I observed investigations and interviewed investigators to better understand how they use technology and their approach to evidence collection and analysis. Second, I scraped websites that sell investigation technologies to get a sense of how genres of technical communication are used by investigators to describe and define their practices. I hope this work will contribute to growing conversations in rhetoric about how to effectively communicate across communities in the “post-truth” era.

As a researcher, I’m invested in questions that explore the tensions and possibilities that emerge when disciplinary science intersects with more publicly accessible ways of knowing. These points of tension feel present in many conversations of the “Post-Truth” moment, so I’m interested in how, and if, researchers from our field can insert ourselves into conversations that include odd or hard to understand evidence. I’d love to help better articulate models for understanding "evidence" - both scientific and “non-scientific” - in a rhetorical sense, especially when it pops up in communication about and with science, fringe science, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories. Said another way, I’m interested in how we can better listen to and understand one another, and how we arrive at certain conclusions, because I see that as a possibly productive path toward collaboration in divisive socio-political climates.

What is your favorite part of RSTC?

I love the RSTC program for so many reasons but the two biggest are related to the people. The program attracts such a wide variety of students pursuing diverse types of projects - I learn as much from them as I did in coursework. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to collaborate with incredibly kind, wildly intelligent people exploring important and interesting topics within rhetoric and writing studies. The faculty and staff are a big part of making this possible - the cultural tone of the program is absolutely set by the amazing mentors I have the chance to work with. They embraced my “odd” dissertation topic with interest, they encouraged me to take risks and try new things in a supportive environment, and they center the wellbeing of students, and themselves, in ways that I didn’t expect from a graduate program. RSTC encourages achievement and celebrates success, of course, but this program is equally invested in whole people, which has been vital to my success as a student.

Tell us about your summer fellowship project!

For my summer fellowship project, I am working on a portion of my dissertation research, which is investigating how public health decisions are made and communicated in the context of environmental toxic exposures. In my research, I am focusing on the 2023 train derailment that occurred in East Palestine, OH, where multiple toxic chemicals were released into the environment. Using various forms of documents and communication surrounding the immediate and ongoing response to the disaster, I am analyzing how health risks and safety were and are being communicated to impacted communities. Through my study, I aim to better understand how communities are using scientific and technical communication to inform their personal health decisions and make meaning of living in an area affected by a chemical disaster.

What is your favorite part of RSTC?

Some of the elements I appreciate most about the RSTC program are the interdisciplinary nature of the program and the exposure to both humanities and social scientific methods/research approaches. Through both coursework and faculty mentorship, we are given the resources to engage and produce a broad range of rhetorical and technical communication scholarship. Additionally, we are provided with immense administrative and programmatic support that focuses on our well-being, not just as students, but as people.