Bedford/St. Martin's is pleased to announce the participants in the 2023 Bedford New Scholars Advisory Board! Advisory Board members are:
| Emily Aguilar (recommended by Danelle Dyckhoff) is a Master's student in English at California State University, Los Angeles, where she is also a Teaching Associate. Her experience teaching first-year writing has amplified her approach to equity-based teaching, especially for ESL students and students with disabilities. She hopes to teach writing as an exercise toward liberation. In addition to her interests in pedagogy, she is interested in literary trauma studies, theories in modernism and postmodernism, speculative fiction, and literature of the incarcerated. |
| Hannah Benefiel (recommended by Kyle Jensen) is a Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition PhD student at Arizona State University. She writes about eating disorders, food as medicine, embodied technical communication, and religious trauma. Currently, she is working on her dissertation that frames eating disorder recovery texts as rhetorical education through the lens of rhythm, myth, and graphic medicine. She serves as the Assistant Director of Writing programs and teaches Professional and Technical Communication, Composition 1&2, and the First Year Composition TA practicum. |
| Jacqueline Cano Diaz (recommended by Joel Schneier) is pursuing an English MA in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Central Florida, where her thesis work centers on the rhetorical aspects of clothing choice, particularly as a woman of color in academia. She teaches Composition I and Composition II as part of the First Year Composition Program. Her research primarily focuses on material and visual rhetorics through a feminist and queer studies lens. In addition to her thesis research, she has applied these interests to study alienation and identification in Halloween costuming and, most recently, literacy activities involved in birdwatching. |
| Ronada Dominique (recommended by Courtney Wooten) is pursuing her PhD in English concentrating on Writing and Rhetoric at George Mason University. She teaches FYC courses and served as the Graduate Writing Program Administrator, overseeing PhD mentoring and professional development and assisting with MA/MFA/Phd orientations. As a Black Millennial Mother in higher education, Ronada explores the representation of Black scholars in Writing Studies publications and how research impacts the Black Experience in higher education classrooms. Starting her PhD studies with a 3-month-old infant, Ronada understands the importance of representation and legacy and wants to ensure that those who are responsible for shaping the academic landscape of the future are equipped to do so. |
| Samira Grayson (recommended by Kate Pantelides) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at Middle Tennessee State University. She has taught Expository Writing and Research and Argumentation (the first year writing sequence at MTSU), and currently serves as the University Writing Center’s program coordinator. Her research interests include writing center and writing program administration, spatial rhetorics and place-based pedagogy, feminist historiography and research methods, and notions of authorship in collaborative writing. She is a member of WPA-GO’s digital presence committee and was recently published in Peitho. |
| Hannah Hopkins (recommended by Diane Davis) is pursuing a PhD in the Rhetoric & Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an Assistant Director of the Digital Writing and Research Lab and an Assistant Instructor for the Center for Teaching and Learning. Hannah teaches a variety of courses in writing and pedagogy, with a focus on digital rhetoric. Students in her special topics course "Rhetoric of Data Justice" create podcasts that explore data justice controversies. Hannah also teaches an introductory pedagogy course for graduate students. Hannah's research investigates storytelling with and about data, data centers, and networked technologies. Her current research engages ways that communities build power through, with, and against digital memory infrastructures, including recent work building solar-powered computers. |
| Amanda E. Scott (recommended by Brian Gogan) is pursuing a PhD in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at Western Michigan University, where she currently serves as an Assistant Director of First-Year Writing. She's taught a variety of undergraduate courses, including developmental writing, first-year composition, technical writing, and editing, as well as graduate-level courses in publishing. Her research, which often explores the intersections between inclusive writing practices, ethical design, and social inequities, has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly and the Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning. |
| Christopher Luis Shosted (recommended by Brooke Rollins) is currently enrolled at Lehigh University where he studies the intersection of rhetoric and literary studies. He teaches courses in the First-Year Writing Program at Lehigh focusing on introducing students to the conventions of academic writing and research as well as persuasive arguments as they exist outside of the university. Additionally, Christopher has also served as the assistant to the First-Year Writing Program working with the director to build protocols for programmatic assessment, educating new teachers joining the program through a year-long practicum, and drafting new iterations of shared syllabi. His research areas focus on applications of classical rhetoric to modern situations and the assessment of student writing along large and small scales. Christopher also currently serves as a co-editor of the Program Profiles section of Composition Forum. |
| Kristen Wheaton (recommended by Dr. Roxanne Mountford) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She teaches primarily First-Year Composition and is currently one of only three instructors leading the co-requisite course first introduced in Fall of 2022. In addition to her teaching role, Kristen is currently the Senior Assistant Director of First-Year Composition. Her research interests include resistance rhetorics, genre theory, ethos, and rhetorics of difference. |
| Ashleah Wimberly (recommended by Elias Dominguez-Barajas) is pursuing their PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at Florida State University, where they hope to defend their dissertation on graduate instructor literacies in Spring 2024. They teach a variety of courses, including first and second year composition and upper-level courses in FSU's Editing, Writing, & Media program such as Rhetoric, Article & Essay Techniques, and Writing in Print & Online. Ashleah has served as a mentor to incoming graduate instructors and as an assistant to the Composition Program. In these roles, they've overseen the mentoring and training of graduate instructors, helped design and implement assessment protocols, and assisted the program director in various administrative tasks. Prior to their work at FSU, Ashleah also co-wrote a custom textbook for the University of North Dakota and assisted librarians in creating custom lessons tailored to the Composition program there. Ashleah's research primarily centers around pedagogy, with strong interests in literacy studies, identity, and accessibility. |
