Summary
Jim Webber's first book, An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public, explores how writing teachers, scholars and administrators respond to contemporary K-16 education reforms. Webber is now working on a second book about the rhetoric of venture philanthropists engaged in K-12 public education reform. This project explores how prominent public figures, such as former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, promote voluntary actions by nonprofit organizations, families and corporations as ways of reforming the teaching profession.
Webber frequently incorporates community and public engagement in his teaching, offering graduate seminars on this topic, designing undergraduate courses around this aim and helping the Core Writing program support teaching through this lens.
Research interests
- Composition's public context
- Public discourse about education
- Rhetorics of public policy, expertise, and political economy
- Composition pedagogy/programs
Courses taught
- ENG 100: Composition Studio
- ENG 101: Composition I
- ENG 321: Writing in the Disciplines and Professions
- ENG 400A/600A: Topics in Writing
- ENG 401B/601B: Advanced Non-Fiction
- ENG 400B/600B: Topics in Professional Writing
- ENG 732: Problems in Writing
- ENG 735: Seminar in Rhetoric and Composition
- ENG 738: Seminar in Professional Writing
Selected publications
Book
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- An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public. Utah State University Press. 2017.
Articles
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- "Toward an Artful Critique of Reform: Responding to Standards, Assessment, and Machine Scoring." College Composition and Communication 69.1 (2017): 118-45.
- "Expanding the 'We' of Composition: Teachers, Scholars, Disciplinarity, Feminism." JAC 28.3-4 (2008): 475-502.
- "(Re)Charting the (Dis)Courses of Faith and Politics, or Rhetoric and Democracy in the Burkean Barnyard." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 38.3 (2008): 311-34. (with Michael-John DePalma and Jeffrey M. Ringer)
Education
- Ph.D., Composition Studies, University of New Hampshire, 2012
- M.A., English, University of New Hampshire, 2005
- B.A., English and Spanish, Augsburg College in Minnesota, 1999