Assistant Professor
Within rhetoric and composition, which is my primary field, all of my academic work—my teaching, research and scholarship, and professional service—reflects my abiding interest in pedagogy, performance, and media. In the classroom, I like offering writing- and research-intensive courses, where students have opportunities to write academic essays based on textual scholarship, multimedia displays that feature creative research, and digital video compositions drawn from interviews and fieldwork. Outside the classroom, I like working with students who want to give their coursework a second life, whether they choose to pursue independent research projects, scholarly presentations, community connections, or publications.
For my part, when I am not in the classroom, I am likely to be studying the classroom along with different aspects of teaching and learning throughout the history of rhetoric and composition. Some of my favorite examples come from as long ago the British long eighteenth century; others come from as far afield as the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee. Mainly, however, I focus my attention on the twenty-first-century writing that is closest to me. Since 2001, I have been part of the Stanford Study of Writing research team. Our goal has been to learn as much as we can from a group of student writers who began college in the shadow of 9/11 and who graduated at the same time Facebook was going public. Between 2005 and 2007, I turned my focus to first-year English. My goal was to find out whether and how using different mediums—from the body to the Internet—might help students improve their critical literacies. Now, with funding from the Mellon Foundation, I am leading a project at Kenyon College, where I will explore not only where and how Kenyon students learn about writing, but also how they use writing to build community in a unique small liberal arts college setting.
A great deal of my academic work is collaborative, involving both students and colleagues. I also work closely with teachers and scholars from across the country and the world through my participation and leadership in professional organizations such as the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Rhetoric Society of America. Were I to tag my academic work or make an abecedary to represent what is important to me, I would be sure to include these terms: access—books—citizenship and civic rhetorics—digital scholarship—embodied literacies—first year English—graphic novels—histories—inquiry—Jane Rhetor—knowledge transfer—longitudinal writing research—mentoring—new media—old media—popular education—qualitative and quantitative research methods—rhetoric as a teaching tradition—student-centric pedagogies—theater as a site of rhetorical education—undergraduate research—video composing—writing lives—x-ray metaphors for historiography—youth movements—zone of proximal development.
Personal Website: http://jennfishman.phd.net
Teaching Fields
- Rhetoric and Composition
Office Hours
SPRING 2012
- MW 10:30-12:00
Teaching Schedule
SPRING 2012
- 1002/106 MWF 8:00-8:50 DS356
- 3210/101 MWF 9:00-9:50 DS 356
Research Interests
- Contemporary writing research, especially longitudinal studies of college writing
- Digital rhetorics and multimedia composition, including digital video composing
- Historical rhetoric and writing
- Knowledge transfer and the development of writing expertise
- Performance studies, including theater histories
Selected Publications
- Lead author. "Performing Writing, Performing Literacy." College Composition and Communication 57.2 (December 2005): 224-252. <>
- Lead author. "Educating Jane." Stories of Mentoring: Theory and Praxis. Eds. Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Michelle F. Eble. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2008.
- Lead author. "Taking the High Road: Teaching for Transfer in an FYC Program." Composition Forum. 18 (Summer 2008).
Honors and Awards
- Mellon Presidential Discretionary Grant (awarded through Kenyon College) for "Kenyon Writes"
- Richard A. Braddock Award for Outstanding Article on Writing or the Teaching of Writing in CCC for "Performing Writing, Performing Literacy"
- WPA Research Grant for "Does it Transfer: Tracing FYC Students' Rhetorical Practices across Multiple Mediums"
English Department
