Dr. Abby Dubisar

My academic work considers how individuals use writing and reading in their lives to take action. Whether my research focuses on feminist rhetoric, activism, writing in the disciplines, multimodal and digital literacies, or student writing, my inquiries are motivated by understanding rhetoric in action, how citizens and communities make space for themselves to communicate their arguments.

My current research projects include a feminist rhetorical analysis of the 2012 Report on the Status of Women and Girls in Iowa, "She Matters."; archival research on writer and activist Ruth Buxton Sayre (1896-1980), "First Lady of the Farm"; and a person-based project about students' remix videos composed in a feminist theory-focused senior tech comm seminar.

Here at Iowa State I've taught: Engl 250 Written, Oral, Visual, and Electronic Composition; Sp Cm 323 Gender and Communication; Engl 418 Argumentation Seminar; Engl 477 "Feminist Theory and Technical Communication," Seminar in Technical Communication; Engl 611. "What Difference Does Rhetoric Make? Activism, Justice, and Social Change," Special Topics in Rhetorical Theory.

Office/Office Hours

Interests

• gendered/feminist rhetorics
• activist rhetorics/pedagogy
• rhetorics of peace/war
• digital and multimodal writing
• writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines
• rhetorical history and theory
• disability studies

Selected Publications

• "Motherhood and Activism in the Dis/Enabling Context of War: The Case of Cindy Sheehan." Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of Embodied Knowledge. Eds. Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jennifer Cellio. Syracuse University Press, 2011. Print.
• "Palin/Pathos/Peter Griffin: Political Video Remix and Composition Pedagogy." Computers and Composition. 27:2 (June 2010): 77-93. With Jason Palmeri.
• "A Call to Action: Teaching, Researching, and Documenting Literacies in the Twenty-First Century." Pedagogy 7:1 (Winter 2007): 133-140.

Affiliations

• Young Scholars in Writing (Faculty Advising Editor)
• Rhetoric Society of America
• National Council of Teachers of English
• Council of Writing Program Administrators

Degrees

• PhD, Miami University (Ohio). Dissertation, "Women for Peace: Gendered Rhetorics in Contexts of War and Violence." 2010.
• MA, Ohio State University. 2005.
• BA, University of Missouri-Kansas City. 2001.