Nancy Henaku, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the RTC program, has received one of three inaugural Feminist Research Grants awarded by the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. This will support her travel to archives for her dissertation research on the rhetoric of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, the first female candidate for president of Ghana. The review committee “expressed great enthusiasm for [her] dissertation project, which is poised to bring important perspective from the global South and specifically from Ghana to ongoing research in transnational feminist rhetoric.”
Brilliant Books in Traverse City, recently interviewed Rhetoric, Theory and Culture PhD student, writer and poet Edzordzi Agbozo about his writing. Two of Agbozo’s poems appear in the spring 2018 issue of Northern Michigan’s premier literary journal, Dunes Review. See the full interview online.
RTC PhD student Sarah Potter received a top paper award and presented the paper on the panel, Top Papers in the Communication Ethics, Activism, and Social Justice Interest Group at the Central States Communication Association Conference. The paper title is “Different Rights (in)Different Times: Rendering the Invisible Visible in a Comparative Iconographic Analysis of the Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913 and the 2017 Women’s March on Washington.” She was also a panel member for the graduate student discussion session, “When the Experts Don’t Agree: Navigating Differences in Faculty Advice.” The conference was held April 5-8, 2018 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Department of Humanities is pleased to announce a Rhetoric, Theory and Culture Colloquium to be held on Friday, March 23. RTC student Federico Correa will first present his talk “The Ambivalence of Learning: Between the Feeling of Being at Home and the Challenges of Leaving It” followed by RTC student Laura Vidal Chiesa presenting “Women and Embodiment: Expressing through Our Bodies.” Oren Abeles will be providing commentary to the presenters.
Please join us 5 p.m. Friday, March 23 in Walker 134.
Edzordzi Agbozo, Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture Ph.D. Candidate, authored, with co-author Kwame Osei-Poku, a book chapter entitled “Negotiating the Gothic in African literature: a study of Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and Besie Head’s Maru“.
Agbozo’s work is in Memories of the Caribbean futures: Reclaiming the pre-colonial to imagine a post-colonial in the languages, literatures and cultures of the Greater Caribbean and beyond, 2017. University of Curacao and the University of Puerto Rico published the book along with editors Nicholas Faraclas, Ronald Severing, Christa Weijer, Elisabeth Echteld, Wim Rutgers, and Robert Dupey.
Congratulations!
The Department of Humanities is pleased to announce a Rhetoric, Theory and Culture Colloquium to be held on Friday, November 10. RTC student Nancy Henaku will first present her talk “Instrumentalizing empowerment: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ ‘Feminist’ Rhetoric” followed by RTC students Edzordzi Agbozo & Tolu Odebunmi presenting “Rhetorical ecologies in contemporary West Africa: reconsidering the ‘triglossic structure’.” Patty Sotirin will be providing commentary to the presenters.
Please join us 5 p.m. Friday, November 10 in Walker 134.
Anna K. Swartz, a graduate student in RTC (HU) presented a paper, “The Blame Frame: Representations of Mental Illness in Mainstream News Accounts of U.S. School Shootings,” at the Midwest Popular Culture Association and Midwest American Culture Association annual conference in St. Louis, Missouri on Oct. 19.
Swartz also presented a paper, “Incentivized Neglect: Privatized mental health care in prisons” at the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities Annual Meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, on Oct. 21.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has appointed Michigan Tech alumnus Nathaniel Gbessagee ’12 as president of Grand Bassa Community College, three miles north of Buchanan on Liberia’s Atlantic coast.
Gbessagee received his PhD in rhetoric and technical communication from Michigan Tech in 2012. His dissertation research focused on improving risk communication about malaria in Liberia.
After completing his doctorate, Gbessagee returned to Liberia, where he accepted a faculty position in the Department of Arts and Sciences at Tubman University. In 2016, Gbessagee was appointed a senior aide to the chairman of Liberia’s National Elections Commission. His responsibilities as president of Grand Bassa Community College will begin in August.
The Rhetoric Theory and Culture PhD program had five graduates receiving their degrees at Michigan Tech’s Spring Commencement on Saturday April 29.
Pictured here are faculty advisors and graduates, from left to right, Jennifer Slack, Nate Carpenter, Kirsti Arko, Joel Beatty, Stefka Hristova, Vicky Bergvall, Ann Brady, Ron Strickland and Yunana Ahmed.
Also participating in the ceremony but not present for this photo was Professor Emerita Beth Flynn.
Congratulations!
PhD student Vincent Manzie received the Top Student Paper Award at the 2017 International Crisis & Risk Communication Conference in Orlando, FL. The paper is “Applying the Rhetoric of Renewal Model in a Contemporary African Context: Lessons Learned from Royal Dutch Shell Oil Crisis in Nigeria.”