Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Composition

The Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition is focused on Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice. Literacy encompasses all acts of meaning construction in academic and nonacademic settings and across reading, writing, and other relevant forms of representation. Rhetoric includes the production and use of texts for distinct audiences and social contexts. Social Practice refers to the embeddedness of literacy and rhetoric within the larger discursive and material contexts of human activity.

The graduate program in Rhetoric and Composition is designed to be unique within the field of Rhetoric and Composition and within the state of Ohio. Grounded in rhetoric and language study, course work and research in the program center on how advanced literacy is embedded within and constitutive of communities of work and citizenship in contemporary culture. Well aware of the historical and institutional link between composition instruction and the humanities, we designed our program to forge close connections between language and literacy at the university and in the work and lives of our students and communities. The graduate program in Rhetoric and Composition connects the university with the communities and constituencies it serves, and it has two major goals: (a) to understand written literacy within the worlds of work and community that college students enter, and (b) to prepare doctoral students to carry out original research that can effect positive change in the practices of workplaces and communities and in the practices of educators teaching in college and university writing programs.