Author: Ann Shivers-McNair

Ann Shivers-McNair is a PhD candidate in language and rhetoric at the University of Washington, where she teaches writing and rhetoric courses. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals and edited collections such as College Composition and Communication and Crossing Divides: Exploring Translingual Writing Pedagogies and Programs.

“What do you want to make?” This was the first question that Eric Renn, founder of SoDo MakerSpace (SMS), asked me when I first visited just over a year ago, and it caught me off guard. I’ve been a professional writer for a decade—first in industry, then in academia—but I’ve never thought of myself as a maker. And I had certainly never used the tools and machines I saw, many of them for the first time, in SMS. I was intrigued and determined to learn more about SMS and about the relationship of writing and rhetoric to other forms of…

Read More

Panelists Jill Morris, Frostburg State University Dave Sheridan, Michigan State University In this Saturday afternoon panel, Jill Morris (Frostburg State) and Dave Sheridan (Michigan State) engaged the audience in considering the work of more-than-just-linguistic rhetoric. Morris began the panel with her talk, “Relocated Attractions at Modern Amusement Parks: Rebuilding an Experience through Rhetoric,” in which she described her case study research on Knoebels Amusement Park in Pennsylvania. Morris used experience architecture, which she defined as “the art and science of articulating clear user journey or story through an information architecture, interaction design, and experience design that an end user navigates…

Read More