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 Claudia Carlos <ccarlos@andrew.cmu.edu >
Assistant Professor of Rhetoric
(412) 268-6214
My research interests focus on the history of rhetoric, with special emphasis on the connection between argumentation and style, the rhetoric of indirection, and seventeenth-century European rhetoric. I am currently preparing a book manuscript that explores the argumentative potential of stylistic figures and their relation to an "art of safe criticism." As a case study, I use six sermons by the seventeenth-century French preacher, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704). Given in 1662 during Lent, the sermons offer a provocative critique not only of Louis XIV's social policies toward the poor, but also of the king's own moral excesses. This work has also led to two other projects. The first concerns the post-revolutionary French reception of Bossuet's sermons and the second examines the "style as argument" question by considering examples not only from Bossuet's prose but also that of more contemporary writers, such as Edward Said. Finally, I am also fascinated by how style functions rhetorically in prose fiction. In 2003, my article on Edmond and Jules de Goncourt's novel, Madame Gervaisais, appeared in the French journal, Les cahiers naturalistes.
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 Linda
Flower
Professor of English and Rhetoric, Co-Director
of Center for University Outreach
(412) 268-2863
[home page]
Cognitive rhetoric is a new area of rhetorical research that invites
curiosity about the ways people actually construct meaning as they
read and write. As a cognitive rhetorician I am interested in the
thinking process writers go through as they read a situation, plan,
write, and revise and in the different problem-solving strategies
experienced and developing writers use. In Reading-to-Write:
Exploring a Cognitive and Social Process we showed the radically
different ways CMU freshmen represented a supposedly standard academic
task to themselves. In The Construction of Negotiated Meaning
I sketch a theory of how writers interpret and negotiate the forces
and voices that shape writing. And at the Community Literacy Center
my students and I are trying to turn this theory into practice.
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 Paul
Hopper<hopper@cmu.edu>
Professor of English and Linguistics and Paul Mellon
Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
(412) 268-7174
[home page]
My research and teaching have been centered on the connections between rhetoric (discourse) and grammar (linguistic structure). I am interested in working out the implications of an idea first broached by me in 1988, that structure is not immanent in a language but "emerges" through repetitions of favored word groupings in discourse. Along these lines, I wrote, with the Stanford linguist Elizabeth Traugott, a book, Grammaticalization (Cambridge 1993), that describes the typical historical sources and trajectories of the forms that make up the grammar of a language. Some of my work involves a critique of the standard assumptions of linguistics from the perspective of rhetoric. I'm fascinated by structural differences among languages and the search for "the essential" in language, and this interest has led me into a variety of projects, from comparative Indo-European and the Malayo-Polynesian languages to discourse analysis to the study of human-ape communication. I have published articles and written and edited books on Indo-European and Germanic philology and on Malay discourse. I have been editor of the journal Language Sciences, and have served on the executive committees of the MLA's Language Theory section and of the Linguistic Society of America. I've been the Collitz Professor at the LSA's Linguistics Institute, and have been a Fulbright Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow.
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 Suguru Ishizaki <suguru@cmu.edu>
Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Design
(412) 268-4103
My research focuses on developing tools for communication design. My work in the past several years has addressed problems and opportunities associated with the design of digital communication media. In my book, Improvisational Design: Continuous Responsive Digital Communication (MIT Press, 2003), I proposed a descriptive model of design--along with a series of computational experiments--that would allow designers to represent design solutions that are responsive to dynamic changes in the information recipient's intention, in the situation, and in the information. I also explored Kinetic Typography--a study of how different situated meanings of written text emerge by expressing the text using animated forms. Recently, I have begun to work on developing a theoretical framework that would allow us to analyze how surface visual design decisions relate to rhetorical effects. I have also been collaborating with David Kaufer on rhetorical text analysis. In this project, I have been developing computational tools for analyzing rhetorical effects through surface patterns of English. The results of this collaboration have been published in Power of Words: Unveiling the Speaker and Writer's Hidden Craft (Erlbaum, 2004), co-authored with David Kaufer, Jeff Collins, and Brian Butler. I am also a practicing interaction and visual designer.
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 Barbara
Johnstone <bj4+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics
(412)
268-6447
[home page]
My work is in an area that might be called "discourse
studies," at the intersection of rhetoric, linguistics, and critical
theory. I have worked on persuasive styles and strategies in the
Middle East, on narrative in the American heartland, on the forms
and functions of repetition in language, and on the role of the
individual in language and linguistics. I am interested in how the
relationships between individuals and communities are created and
maintained through discourse (talk and writing) and discourses (ways
of thinking). My current work is about how the way of talking popularly
known as "Pittsburghese" is constructed through local talk, and
talk about local talk. I want to see how people's understandings
of language and place are connected with language change in this
part of the North Midland dialect area, and I am interested in how
local-sounding speech functions as a rhetorical resource. I use,
and teach others about, qualitative, interpretive research methods
such as ethnography and discourse analysis.
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 David
S. Kaufer <kaufer+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Professor of English and Rhetoric
(412) 268-2850
[home page]
My interests are in qualitative and quantitative theories of rhetoric, writing and written information. In addition to heading the Carnegie Mellon English department, I co-chair an interdisciplinary masters program between English and the School of Design in the College of Fine Arts. For the past decade, I have been interested in investigating rhetoric as an art of design and this research interest has dove-tailed well with my administrative interest in co-directing a program between English and the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. My research interests have led to theoretical (Kaufer & Butler, 1996) and more practical books (Kaufer & Butler, 2000) relating rhetoric and design. My recent work has involved collaborating on software interfaces that allow researchers and students to analyze texts visually for their locally patterns of rhetorical design. I am currently working on a book (with Suguru Ishizaki and Jeff Collins, along with Brian Butler), that associates multi-word English patterns with rhetorical effects. This book explains the rhetorical/language theory behind the visualization software. I am developing new courses in rhetorical analysis and World Englishes.
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 Chris
Neuwirth <cmn+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Professor of English and Human Computer Interaction and Department Head
+1 (412) 268-8702
[home page]
My research activities have focused on developing theory- and research-based
computer tools for reading and writing, as well as conducting empirical
research that explores the effects of those tools. The tools allow
us to test hypotheses about how external representations can augment
writers' performances. I've also focused on arguments of policy
and on collaborative writing.
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 Andrea
Deciu Ritivoi <aritivoi@andrew.cmu.edu>
Associate Professor of English and Rhetoric
My research interests are in several fields, such as rhetorical theory, rhetoric of science, intellectual history, and intercultural communication. I've tried to bring them all together in a book, Yesterday's Self: Nostalgia and the Construction of Personal Identity, which was published in 2002 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. My concern in this book is to understand how individuals develop a sense of who they are by creating narratives about themselves and others. I am now working on a book coming out with SUNY Press on modern rhetorical theory with emphasis on Paul Ricouer's contribution to rhetorical studies, especially concerning issues like representation and figuration. I teach professional writing and the rhetoric of science.
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 Karen
Rossi Schnakenberg <krs+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Teaching Professor of Rhetoric and Writing
(412) 268-2659
[home page]
My interests center around the history of writing instruction and English Departments, curriculum design, and the teaching of writing. In research, I'm particularly interested in how learning to write is conceptualized, how such conceptions influence writing pedagogy, and the relationship between theory and practice in writing instruction. I also have a long-standing interest in methods for communicating specialized information to non-expert audiences. In curriculum development, I'm developing a situation-based method for teaching technical and professional writing. Administratively, I direct our undergraduate and MA programs in technical and professional writing.
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Erwin
R. Steinberg<es2t+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Professor of English and Rhetoric (Emeritus)
(412) 268-2866
[home page]
My teaching and research concern the various
uses of language in reading and writing. In literature, I teach
and write about how meaning is derived from and assigned to novels
of the early twentieth century--particularly those by James Joyce,
Franz Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. In rhetoric and
composition, I am especially interested in writing in business,
industry, and government. As a teacher and a student of writing,
I am more of a practitioner than a theoretician. I do a good bit
of writing, and I serve as a communication consultant in business,
industry and government. Those experiences enable me to write about
how to solve practical writing problems and to bring such problems
into the classroom.
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 Danielle Zawodny Wetzel <dfz@andrew.cmu.edu>
Director, First-Year English Program
Assistant Teaching Professor
412-268-4468
First Year English
I’m interested in all things related to the teaching and assessment of reading and writing—especially at the intersection of rhetoric, applied linguistics, and composition. As the director of the First-Year English Program, my responsibilities range from training and mentoring new PhD student teachers, to instructing our ESL first-year students, to maintaining a working relationship with our English faculty and staff at our branch campus in Doha, Qatar.
More specifically, I am working on designing more curriculum options for
students who are nonnative English speakers and are considered to be
“proficient” in English. Alongside that challenge, I am developing training
materials for First-Year English teachers to incorporate linguistic
heterogeneity into their personal pedagogies.
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 James
Wynn<jwynn@andrew.cmu.edu>
Assistant Professor of Rhetoric
412-268-9765
My primary interest is in the intersection of science, mathematics, and rhetoric. Currently, I am working on the manuscript of a book which explores the confluence of these three fields in the development of theories of evolution and heredity in the nineteenth century. In this work, I examine the often tenuous relationship between mathematics and the biological sciences and explore the role of rhetorical strategies and methodologies in mediating their disciplinary differences. Generally, I am interested in the role of rhetoric in the development of scientific knowledge especially the use of rhetorical methods and strategies to establish new warrants, a process that is vital in cases where scientists hope to incorporate knowledge from other fields to create new knowledge in their own.
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