April Conway Research Agenda

As a feminist teacher-scholar, I am interested in the intersections of literacy, rhetoric, and composition, and in
the empowering possibilities of making connections across academic and non-academic spaces. My
background in English affords me the opportunity to make connections across teaching and research goals as
much as across disciplines. As a researcher, I situate myself within literacy and composition studies, including
writing pedagogy, with a focus on civic and digital rhetorics and research methods and methodologies.
Like rhetoric and composition scholars Amy Propen, Nedra Reynolds; and Amy Diehl, Jeffrey T. Grabill,
William Hart-Davidson, and Vashil Iyer, in my dissertation Practitioners of Earth: The Literacy Practices and
Civic Rhetorics of Grassroots Cartographers and Writing Instructors I argue that literacy practices utilized by
community map-makers and writing professors can inform how to teach students to compose for civic
purposes. Specifically, I explore how international grassroots cartographers make maps to empower
marginalized communities and how writing professors incorporate map-making into their curriculum as a
component of civic composing. Guided by a feminist teacher-research and grounded-theory methodological
framework, I collected data from interviews and participants course materials, maps, and web documents.
Findings show that technological tools and communication, personal and trans-cultural awareness, rhetorical
considerations of audience and ethos, and multimodal and recursive composing practices are literate activities
necessary to create civic infrastructures that affect community change. Furthermore, I draw on findings from
my participants, rhetoric and composition scholars, feminist teachers, and the National Council of Teachers of
English literacy position statements to develop civic learning objectives for the writing classroom.
Currently, my research agenda reflects a connection between my teaching and dissertation. For instance, based
on the digital and intersectional pedagogical praxis exemplified in the first-year writing courses I instruct, as
well as my research on intersectional feminism and technological literacy, I am currently developing a course
titled Digital Rhetorics and Discourse Communities that emphasizes the connections between digital rhetorics,
race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of identity. This is a course inspired by Samantha Blackmons
pedagogical scholarship and in it I draw on students digital knowledge to analyze digital texts by diverse
authors and to create digital representations of their racialized, gendered, and sexualized selves. In this course,
I encourage students to submit their research to the undergraduate journal Queen City Writers or the DALN so
that the diversity of their voices and importance of their scholarship can be widely circulated. In the spirit of
interdisciplinary practice, I will seek collaborative opportunities with faculty in programs such as ethnic and
gender studies to work on subjects stemming from the Digital Rhetorics and Discourse Communities course.
Such collaborations may include projects where students share strategies for creating diverse digital and web
representations with their peers in other programs. Together, the students, with faculty serving as mentors, can
apply these strategies to develop websites for community or student organizations as forms of professional
development and social justice leadership.
Furthermore, my research in cross-cultural literacy practices and civic rhetorics, and my teaching of writing
with a service-learning focus, prompts me to develop a graduate course tilted Community Literacies. In this
course, students will examine contemporary writing research that complements community literacy, including
community-based research, qualitative empirical research, racial and feminist methodologies, case studies,
auto- and ethnography, and research ethics. In addition, students and I will perform writing tasks asked for by a
community partner and students will develop literacy projects relevant to a community to which they belong.
In addition to incorporating research into my teaching, I am currently pursuing on publication opportunities
based on my dissertation. For instance, a pre-proposal for my manuscript Practitioners of Earth: The Literacy
Practices and Civic Rhetorics of Grassroots Cartographers and Writing Instructors is under review at
Computers and Composition Digital Press. Additionally, my article Grassroots Mapping, Civic Rhetoric, and
Technological Literacy Practices is being finalized for submission to Literacy in Composition Studies
Journal. In addition to publications related to the dissertation, I will seek publication opportunities related to
other research interests. For example, I plan to submit a course design about feminist-based pedagogy in a
service-learning writing course to Composition Studies.

April Conway Research Agenda

My positionality as a feminist teacher-scholar informs why I choose to explore how people do the everyday
work they do in order to make their lives and communities better, focusing specifically on literacy practices in
and outside the composition classroom. Ultimately, I aim to make connections across concepts, practices, and
spaces so that my students and my peers will benefit as much as I do from the research I conduct.

Works Cited
Blackmon, Samantha. But Im Just White or How Other Pedagogies Can Benefit All Students. Teaching
Writing with Computers: An Introduction, edited by Pamela Takayoshi and Brian Huot, Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2003, pp. 92-102.