Rhetoric & Writing

Welcome to the home of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of New Mexico. Our program is undergoing an exciting period of growth and change with the hiring of seven new tenure-track faculty members over the past few years. Our faculty’s diverse specialties include technical communication, language diversity, second language writing, writing program administration, K-12 composition, and multimodal composition. One of these faculty members holds a unique joint appointment with the Department of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies in the College of Education, which enables our students to make cross-disciplinary connections in their research.

Students in our programs have a number of opportunities to gain experience in their area of interest. Our undergraduates can take part in an internship situated in a variety of non-profit organizations, institutions, and businesses. Many of our graduate students teach our Core Writing classes, including English 1110, 1120, 2210, and 2120. Graduate students also have the opportunity to serve in various administrative capacities in our Core Writing program, where we are currently re-envisioning the ways we teach developmental writing, multimodal composition, and L2 writing. Other students are involved in the Writing Across Communities initiative, which aims to support writing instruction not only across the curriculum but across broader communities, something evidenced in our graduate-student-run Celebration of Student Writing and Community Writing Center. Our graduates have pursued a variety of career paths, including the following: technical writing, K-12 teaching, university professorships; grant writing; and commercial publishing and editing.

Rhetoric and Writing Faculty

Director: Bethany Davila, Associate Professor

• race, whiteness, language diversity, standardness, qualitative research, writing program administration

Stephen Benz, Associate Professor

• literary journalism; the essay as a genre; prose style; travel writing

Tiffany Bourelle, Professor

• multimodal composition; online writing instruction; service learning; technical communication

Andrew Bourelle, Professor

• classical rhetoric; multimodal composition; online writing instruction; technical and professional writing

Pisarn Bee Chamcharatsri, Associate Professor

• L2 writing; identity; emotion

Cristyn L. Elder, Associate Professor

• writing program administration; writing across the curriculum; composition and writing center theory and practice; multilingual writers; research methods 

Tyler Johnson, Lecturer III

Julie Newmark, Principal Lecturer III

• technical and professional writing; indigenous rhetoric; indigenous activism; visual rhetoric; digital publishing; archival research

Chuck Paine, Professor

Rachael Reynolds, Senior Lecturer III