Rhetorical Infrastructures

Brian J. McNely, a new faculty member, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended the University of Oregon, worked in industry for nine years, and is currently finishing his PhD in rhetoric and writing studies at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Currently, McNely is working on exploring the rhetorical infrastructures of 21st century writing activity, looking specifically at collaborative writing and knowledge sharing in distributed networks, persistent backchannel communication as an instructional technology, and platforms of ambient research. He is also interested in the relationships between discourse and the organization of space and place. These issues and others are examined at length two publications: a chapter in The Responsibilities of Rhetoric (Waveland Press, August 2009), and a chapter in Undergraduate Research in/and English Studies (NCTE, April 2010).

McNely’s doctoral research is focused on the disciplinary future of rhetoric and composition, exploring both how we've come to think and research writing as a discipline, and what we can do to redirect such research in the interests of greater viability as a field, both within academia and beyond. McNely examines key trajectories of historical writing research through frameworks of common placing and path dependence.

More information about McNely’s work can be found at www.brianmcnely.com. He also maintains a blog which discusses research and technology issues in the field, as well as photography and rhetoric of space and place.