Montgomery Quaid Adams

Graduate Student

• mqadams@iu.edu

Quaid Adams is a PhD student of Rhetoric and Composition and is also pursuing an MA in Folklore and Ethnomusicology here at IUB. He received his BA in Secondary English Education and Folklore/Mythology from the University of Kentucky, and an MA in English from the University of Louisville. His research interests lie at the intersection of Rhetoric and Folklore concentrating on “otherness,” ethnography, and the role legend plays in our construction of time/space and our relationship to the world around us. Along these same lines, Quaid is also interested in Composition Studies and how ethnography and folklore can be used as an incredibly impactful resource within the writing classroom, particularly in first year writing courses.  

Elise Baker

• clelbake@iu.edu

Elise is an Indiana native whose writing utilizes Frankfurt School critical theories in application to contemporary sociopolitical narratives in American culture, specifically in the mediums of news and social media. She recently finished her B.A. in English at IU Bloomington and is ecstatic to continue her journey in graduate coursework. She also holds a position at the IU Center for Veteran and Military Students, working with incoming students in their transition to higher education. In her free time, Elise enjoys cooking and baking for friends and family, oil painting, and being an aunt to two nephews and one niece.

AC Carlson

Graduate Student

• anlcarl@iu.edu

AC Carlson is a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric. Before coming to IU, they earned a BA in English, a BA in Theatre, and an MA in English Literature from Northern Arizona University. AC's scholarly interests can be found at the complex intersection of rhetoric, media, and culture. Pedagogically, AC is interested in multi-modal composition and gamification in the classroom. Their current work focuses on discourses around outer space and how imaginings of the future shape practices. AC has previously examined questions of circulation in media ecologies, and they have a creative as well as academic interest in podcasting and audio fiction. When they are not working, AC enjoys video games, looking at trees, and playing with their cat, Geoff. 

Sarah Fischer

Graduate Student

• samafisc@iu.edu

Sarah Fischer is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and winner of the 2024 Lieber Memorial Associate Instructor Award. Her research and teaching bridge the gap between academic writing and self-sponsored writing on social media. She studies the intersection of embodiment, multimedia, and feminism, as they are enacted through lifestyle vlogs on YouTube. Her dissertation, From Writers to Content Creators: Teaching, Embodiment, & Multimodal Composition, argues for vlogs as productive student assignments that increase students' rhetorical awareness and work towards equity, inclusivity, and accessibility.

Kaylie Fougerousse

Graduate Student

• kefouger@iu.edu

KKaylie Fougerousse (foo-jeh-roo) is an English Ph.D. student and associate instructor, who specializes in spatial theories of writing in Rhetoric and Composition studies. Fougerousse holds a B.S. in Secondary English Education from Indiana University and a M.A. in Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory from King's College London. Her thesis looked at how Diné poetics enact rhetorical sovereignty and grounded normativity in composition practices. Her current doctoral scholarship joins the National Council of Teachers of English in re-imagining potential in public pedagogy and literacy sites with oscillations of community reckoning and community repair. Fougerousse studies how asking “the so-where questions,” to recognize a place-as-composition, can guide geo-analyses of layered storying and relational spatial identities of lands, humans, and the more-than-human.

Millie Hizer

Graduate Student

• amhizer@iu.edu

Millie Hizer is a PhD Candidate in English specializing in rhetoric and composition. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of disability studies, rhetorical theory, writing studies pedagogy, and community literacy. Hizer’s dissertation examines how disabled students and faculty in higher education navigate academic ableism through embodied, rhetorical tactics of resistance. She has published her writing in The Community Literacy Journal, enculturation: a journal of rhetoric, writing, and culture, The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, and Spark: A4C4 Equality Journal. She is also the winner of the 2021 Virginia La Follette Gunderson Rhetoric Award, the Fall 2023 Culbertson Dissertation Fellowship, and has been designated as a 2023-2024 endowed scholar by the International Chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood.

Her work has also been featured on disciplinary podcasts such as Tell me More! and Pedagogue. As a scholar, teacher, and writer center tutor committed to principles of Disability Justice, Millie centers disability storytelling in both her research and pedagogy.

Joanna Gordon

• jorgordo@iu.edu

Joanna Gordon is a PhD student in Rhetoric & Composition. Originally from Honolulu, Hawai'i, she received her BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and an MFA in Poetry from Western Washington University. Though she's a creative writer by trade, her research interests have turned towards decolonial rhetorics, writing pedagogy, research methodologies, place-based studies, and Pacific Islander and Hawaiian studies. Her creative work has been published with The Shore, Cherry Tree, Nimrod International Journal, Bamboo Ridge Press, and more.

Eryn Johnson

Graduate Student

• erynjohn@iu.edu

Eryn is a PhD student studying rhetoric and composition. She came to IU with a background in literary studies and communication studies. Eryn’s current research interests include the intersection of rhetoric and ethics as it comes to bear upon the narrative paradigm (and vice versa) and the role that ethics plays in rhetoric as a teaching tradition. ​ 

Lauren Keeley

• mlkeeley@iu.edu

Lauren is a PhD student in rhetoric. She is interested in the ontological poetics of rhetoric and composition in ancient Greece, the Presocratics, and the place of rhetoric in Martin Heidegger's phenomenology. She also loves creative nonfiction writing and french.

Chad Kuehn

Graduate Student

• ctkuehn@iu.edu

Chad comes to Indiana University from St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota where he earned M.A. degrees in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), and in Writing Studies and Rhetoric, and where he taught as an adjunct in the English for Academic Purposes program. Chad is currently an English PhD student with a concentration in Rhetoric. He is interested in discourses of privilege and how they shape agency in hegemonic relationships. He aspires to effect change in how all parties more generously engage in conversations of privilege, and its dismantling. 

Sarah Lawler

Graduate Student

• salawler@iu.edu

Sarah Lawler is an English PhD candidate in rhetoric, an associate instructor of speech, and an assistant director for composition. She graduated with a BA in English Education from the University of North Dakota in 2014; in 2021, she received an MA in English with a Literacy and Rhetorical Studies minor from the University of Minnesota Duluth. In the time between these degrees, she taught English language arts in middle and secondary school settings. As a scholar and researcher, she is interested in environmental rhetoric, especially as it pertains to land equity and land-use ethics, climate diaspora and migration, and climate change discourse. Currently, her work considers rhetorics of reproductive justice through the interstices of climate uncertainty. You can find her publications in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature and Environment, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Peauxdunque Review.

Benjamin Luczak

Graduate Student

• bluczak@iu.edu

Benjamin Luczak is a Rhetoric PhD student whose scholarly interests include the rhetoric of space and public memory as well as theories of the public sphere. He received an MA in English with a composition emphasis from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

Peyton Lunzer

Graduate Student

• pllunzer@iu.edu

Peyton is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric interested in life writing, ecocomposition, and blended scholarship. Her dissertation, “Stories We Call Home,” uses ecological thinking and life writing practices to build pedagogy grounded in personal stories. She teaches classes about place, wilderness, climate writing, identity, and global stories. Peyton currently lives in Laramie, Wyoming. 

Chaim McNamee

Graduate Student

• mcnameek@iu.edu

Chaim (he/him and they/them) is a PhD student in rhetoric with a minor in religious studies. His broad areas of interest include critical animal studies, new materialism(s), and Jewish rhetorics. Any time not occupied with working, teaching, and cooking is spent tattooing out of his home studio.

Jason Michálek

Graduate Student

• jasomich@iu.edu

Jason Michálek entered IU’s doctoral program in rhetoric in the fall of 2018. His research interests have been historically broad with a BA in English language & literature and linguistics from Grand Valley State University, and an MA in American Studies from The George Washington University. His dissertation project takes up a local controversy concerning transient residents without residence as a foundation for troubling rhetorics of belonging and alienation.

S. Fain Riopelle

Graduate Student

• sriopell@iu.edu

Fain Riopelle is a Ph.D. student in the Rhetoric path, coming from an English M.A. program at the University of Virginia, and before that from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. His research focuses on cognitive theories of composition and the implications of such theories for the ways we teach writing, especially at the first-year college level. He is particularly interested in the dispositions and habits of mind that students bring to the writing process, and in bringing the research of cognitive science to bear on the matter of how students think about what writing is and how it works. Also, his last name is pronounced "Ree-oh-pell." 

Laura Rosche

Graduate Student

• lrosche@iu.edu

Laura Rosche is a PhD candidate in English, with a concentration in Rhetoric. Her dissertation examines the rhetorical strategies women use when narrativizing their experiences as survivors of sexual violation. By prioritizing diverse female voices, Rosche's research focuses broadly on the enactment of feminist ethos, the development of rhetorical listening skills, and the theorization of empathetic communicative practices. Other interests include composition pedagogies, digital rhetorics, and autobiographical rhetorics.

Kelsey Taylor Alexander

Graduate Student

• krt3@iu.edu

Kelsey Taylor Alexander is an English PhD student in Rhetoric with a minor in Cultural Studies. She currently serves as the associate director of Public Oral Communications. She received her MA in English from the University of Georgia in 2020, culminating in her thesis exploring the commodification of exigencies in the neoliberal era. Her current research interests revolve around rhetorical economies, specifically the ways our notions of a neoliberal work ethic evolve in reaction to dominant ideologies in times of sociopolitical and economic crises. She is also interested in Marxist-Feminist approaches towards social movements and radical democracy through an interdisciplinary analysis of communication and the economy.

Joseph Vuletich

Graduate Student

• jvuleti@iu.edu

Joseph Vuletich is a PhD student in English, focusing on the rhetoric of science and technology. His research examines how positionality shapes our perceptions of what counts as knowledge and who counts as knowers. At least that’s what he’s telling himself for the moment. He’s also interested in humor, affect, and first-person narrative (even when he writes in the third person;) as technê in the rhetorical sense – techniques for crafting relationships. When he’s not busy playing with words and encouraging students to do likewise, he enjoys walking, hiking, and playing at the park with his wife and son.