Monograph 

My project historicizes remedial literacy education within a genealogy reaching back to the 1870s when educational policy turned towards assimilation and two populations fell under renewed scrutiny: Native Americans and the Deaf community. I argue that the shifts to off-reservation boarding schools for Native children and the oralist method for deaf children occupy a particularly important and under-studied place in the history of rhetoric. As the federal government initiated a systemic inclusion of linguistically diverse groups into literacy education, deaf and Native children became matters of national concern. No longer romanticized for their gestural and oral literacies respectively, the Deaf Community and Native Americans were forced into standardized performances of the English language. I argue that this move, to include by eradicating difference, is the founding ideology of remedial literacy education. Through archival research methodologies, I analyze pedagogical philosophies and curricular materials from off-reservation boarding schools and schools for the deaf while centering my inquiry on the compositions of students. This approach allows us to see previously unacknowledged forms of resistance and cultural survival employed by student rhetors while observing colonialist continuities in literacy instruction as it is practiced today.

Career Pathways Workshop CCCC 2017 (Wednesday Morning Workshop 3/15/17) 

This workshop is designed for graduate students nearing the end of their programs, as well as faculty advisors, to demonstrate the variety of opportunities that exist for individuals who have earned graduate degrees in the field of rhetoric and composition. This includes tenure track and non tenure track positions at both four-year and two-year colleges and alternative-academic positions. Our workshop thus intentionally avoids the common assumption that faculty research positions are the “gold standard” for academics, and acknowledges the general lack of career development available to graduates in our field. Our goal is to help participants assess their career options mindfully so that they can make decisions (or guide their students to make decisions) that mirror their career goals and lifestyle preferences. Register Here 

Student Equity at California Community Colleges

I came to work at a California Community College during an exciting time. In 2014, Governor Jerry Brown began allocations of $100 million annually to address equity at community colleges across the state.  Each campus now has a Student Equity Committee deciding how to use our funds and looking at research-based plans to correct institutional mistreatment of historically disadvantaged populations. I am working with a team of equity-minded faculty, administrators, and researchers to develop classroom practices and self-evaluation processes for teachers at CCCs. Feel free to contact me for access to our self and peer evaluation templates.

Tenure She Wrote

I’m currently blogging with a fantastic team of women in academia. Look for me under the Dr_Klotz tag as I take on issues such as transitioning from the R1 to the Community College context, building expertise as a teacher/scholar, and LGBTQ families in academic life.

Feminisms and Rhetorics 2015

On October 29th, I will be joining UC Davis colleague Carl Whithaus at Women’s Ways of Making at ASU. Our talk will look at rhetorics of the drought in California and local ways of living in environmental catastrophe.

MLA Convention 2014

This year’s MLA Convention centers around Margaret Ferguson’s presidential theme, Negotiating Sites of Memory.  The division on nineteenth-century American literature invited myself and a number of scholars of Native American literature to curate an archive of Native Sites of Memory to present and discuss at the convention.  Our collaborative archive can be found on MLA Commons.  Please join me in Vancouver for panel 623, scheduled to take place at 5:15-6:30 p.m. on 10-JAN-15 in 120, VCC West (Vancouver Convention Centre).