Rhetoric, Media, and Professional Communication faculty

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Here are some of the faculty members who teach courses for the English-RMPC degree. Click on the faculty member's name to view his or her full profile.

English Language and Literature degrees at the University of Waterloo integrate the study of rhetoric, professional communication, media studies, and literature, so all faculty in the department participate to some degree in the RMPC program. For information on all of our faculty members, see our Faculty profiles page.

Aparajita Bhandari

Aparajita Bhandari's research sits at the nexus of critical internet studies, feminist media studies, and cultural theory engaging in critical examinations of social media platforms with a focus on understanding instantiations of everyday or mundane online experiences as potential sites of resistance against hegemonic power. Her areas of interest include Critical Algorithm/critical data studies, Feminist media studies, Social media studies, Cultural theory, Community engaged and participatory research, Media and materiality .

Frankie Condon

Frankie Condon's primary area of interest lies within the field of composition and rhetoric or writing studies. More specifically, however, within that field she is interested in the intersections between critical race, labor, and rhetoric studies, in narrative and performativity, and in critical pedagogy. She has also written and published in the area of writing center studies. Frankie has taught undergraduate courses in rhetoric and race; writing theory, practice, and pedagogy; and literacy and community; as well as courses in rhetoric as inquiry and as argument.

Jay Dolmage

Jay Dolmage's work brings together rhetoric, writing, disability studies, and critical pedagogy. His first book, entitled Disability Rhetoric, was published with Syracuse University Press in 2014, and he is the Founding Editor of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. Jay has taught undergraduate courses in rhetorical theory and history, composition, and disability studies. He is also working on an ongoing basis to develop teaching materials, resources, and ideas that would make classrooms more accessible for all students.

Clive Forrester

Clive Forrester's research interests include courtroom discourse analysis, Creole linguistics, the relationship between language, gender and sex, and language advocacy/policy. He has been researching language issues encountered by Jamaican Creole speaking witnesses in Ontario courtrooms and how linguistic analysis can be used to resolve and/or clarify some of these issues and is currently working on a project on Caribbean perceptions of hate speech. He teaches courses in academic writing, linguistics, and technical communication.

Randy Harris

Randy Harris's areas of interest include rhetoric, particularly argumentation, the rhetoric of science, computational rhetoric, and figuration; linguistics, particularly generative grammar and cognitive linguistics; and communication design, including usability, document design, and graphic and voice interface design. He has taught undergraduate courses in contemporary issues in rhetoric and writing, science writing, usability testing, theories and practices of documentation, and the nature and structure of English.

Michael MacDonald

Michael MacDonald's areas of interest are the history and theory of rhetoric, media studies, and rhetoric and philosophy. His currently work focuses on modern rhetorical theory, particularly as it relates to mass media, propaganda, and information warfare, and on Greek sophistry and its historical legacy. He has taught undergraduate courses in the history and theory of rhetoric, media studies, and critical theory He is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, and has won the uWaterloo Faculty of Arts Distinguished Teacher Award.

Andrew McMurry

Andrew McMurry's work focuses on the rhetoric of the environment, social systems theory and cybernetics, ecocriticism, semiotics and discourse analysis, nineteenth-century American literature, science fiction, and comics and graphic novels. His current book-in progress, tentatively titled Futile Culture, examines how humans are able to go about destroying the environment while imagining they are not. He has taught undergraduate courses in contemporary issues in rhetoric and writing, environmental rhetoric, and American literature.

Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher

Ashley Mehlenbacher's work examines how science communication is changing with new—especially networked—technologies and also with different communities becoming involved in scientific research and policy-making. Her research is especially concerned with public participation in scientific research (citizen science), expertise and ethos in grassroots scientific research, expertise and expert networks, and biohacking and hacker participation in scientific research.

Aimée Morrison

Aimée Morrison's work focuses on popular reception and remediation of computer technologies, as well as on design for digital media. She teaches courses in literature, digital humanities, history and theory of media, and multimedia practice. Her research examines social media as a set of complex and consequential rhetorical, literary, and social practices undertaken by ordinary people across the full spectrum of daily life. Her project “Deciphering Digital Life Writing” explores how people decide what to say about themselves online, and what motivates these decisions.

Marcel O'Gorman

Marcel O'Gorman is the founding Director of the Critical Media Lab at the University of Waterloo, Canada, where he teaches studio-style courses such as Rhetoric of Image and Text, Necromedia, and Cyberbodies. He has published widely in the fields of media theory and criticism. His written work is reflected in his art projects, which often seek to materialize specific critical theories about the impact of technology on the human condition. He has taught undergraduate courses in digital design, digital rhetoric, and visual rhetoric.

Neil Randall

Neil Randall is director of the Games Institute, which studies games and game-driven interactions and technologies. He teaches courses in games studies, human-computer interaction, J. R. R. Tolkien, and professional writing, including technical documentation, magazine journalism, and multimedia production. He has published numerous how-to computer books and many feature articles, columns, and reviews in computer magazines.

Brianna I. Wiens

Brianna I. Wiens examines how people use media in critical and creative ways to foster community and speak back to power, and explores how we build community through digital technology while negotiating its complex power dimensions. Dr. Wiens works at the intersections of digital culture, rhetoric, and feminist media studies. Across these fields, she leverages queer and intersectional feminist perspectives to examine the rhetorics, politics, and design of technologies and digital artifacts, and asks questions about power at individual, community, and structural levels.