Rhetoric

Prison Literature

Education

• PhD, State University of New York at Albany, 1995  
• MA, State University of New York at Albany, 1992
• BA, The College of Wooster, 1990

Research Interests

• Prison literature
• Memoir
• Writing and healing
• Rhetorical theory
• Political rhetoric in America

Select Publications

• After Jail: Before Freedom. Brandylane Publishers, 2026. 
• The Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing and Mass Incarceration. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
• Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail. Brandylane Publishers, 2015.
• The Public Work of Rhetoric: Citizen Scholars and Civic Engagement. University of South Carolina Press, 2010.

Affiliations

• Rhetoric Society of America
• Imagining America
• Conference on College Composition and Communication

Courses

• English 215: The Moral Compass 
• English 304: Persuasive Writing  
• English 356: Prison Literature
• English 366: Writing and Social Change 
• English 391: Redemption Memoirs 
• English 393: Rhetoric in Public Life
• English 453: Introduction to Modern Rhetoric 
• English 459: Political Rhetoric in the U.S.
• English 499: Senior Seminar in Prison Memoir 

Awards

• College of Humanities and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award, Fall 2020
• University Excellence in Service-Learning Faculty Award, Spring 2020

Links

• Podcast, Writing Our Way Out
• Blog, Writing to Freedomop
• OPEN MINDS program