Laurie Gries, Ph.D.
- Director for the Program for Writing and Rhetoric
- Adviser for the Writing and Public Engagement Minor
- Associate Professor
Address
ENVD 1B27-A
Degree(s)
- PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetorics, Syracuse University
Areas of Expertise
- Cultural Rhetorics
- Public Rhetorics, Civics, and Advocacy
- Applied Public Humanities
- Writing Studies and Pedagogy
- Digital Storytelling, Content Generation, and New Media
Bio
Laurie Gries has a PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric and has been teaching writing in higher education settings for over 20 years. In addition to directing PWR, she regularly teaches graduate classes on Writing Theories and Practices, and undergraduate classes on public rhetorics, activism, and advocacy for social change for the Writing and Public Engagement Minor. Her scholarship generally focuses on developing research methodologies and methods to better understand the visual, material, and phenomenological dimensions of rhetoric.
Select Accomplishments
- Laurie is author of Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetorics (2015), winner of the 2016 Advancement of Knowledge Award and the 2016 Research Impact Award from Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). She is author of numerous scholarly articles and lead editor of Circulation, Writing, and Rhetoric (2018) as well as the digital book collection Doing Digital Visual Studies: One Image, Multiple Methodologies (2022).
- Laurie is also invested in developing research methods for new materialist rhetorical studies and is currently working on a new book project called Waking Up: Rhetorical Impressions from the Field that attempts to account for the rhetoricity that emerges between self and others in environmentally stressed and threatened landscapes. You can gain a sense of this new work in her 2020 College English article titled “New Materialist Ontobiography: A Critical-creative Approach for Coping and Caring in the Chuthulucene.”
- In addition, Laurie is Director of a public humanities project called The Swastika Counter Project that aims to educate the general public about the targets, circulation, and intensity of antisemitic signs on the streets of the United States.
Course(s) Regularly Taught
- WRTG 2095: Ideas for Social Change
- WRTG 3020: New Media and Civic Engagement
- WRTG 5050: Theories and Practices of Writing Pedagogy