Hosted by the Sweetland Center for Writing, the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (DRC) is an online, community webspace by and for scholars and teachers working in computers and writing and digital rhetoric. It is also the home of an open access book series with the University of Michigan Press.
DRC History and Impact
Over the past year, the DRC has explored its history and begun studying its reach. In honor of inaugural co-director Anne Gere, fellow co-director Naomi Silver contributed a chapter to her Festschrift tracing the DRC's origin stories, its partnership with UM Press, and the beginnings of the Graduate Fellows program. Additionally, Silver and co-director Simone Sessolo, along with Graduate Associate Alyse Campbell, launched "History and Impact of the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative," a mixed methods study combining surveys, interviews, focus groups, and analysis of email archives and UM Press analytics. In March 2025, the team surveyed all Graduate Fellows, Graduate Associates, and Book Series Authors, achieving a 50% response rate with representation from every Fellowship cohort since 2012. Initial results reveal the DRC's impact: as founding advisory board member Doug Eyman observed, the DRC functions as "a network hub in the field" facilitating "connections across spaces that aren't happening" elsewhere. Indeed, half of Graduate Fellow respondents reported ongoing collaborations with fellow alumni—from conference presentations to co-edited journals—and book series authors cited their DRC publications as pivotal in tenure and promotion cases. The next stage will include interviews and focus groups with survey respondents.
Welcome to the 2025-2026 DRC Graduate Fellows
This past fall, the DRC welcomed its thirteenth cohort of graduate student Fellows. The program aims to recognize graduate students around the country currently working in digital rhetoric who want practical experience in online publishing and website development. Fellows are selected on a yearly basis by the directors and board of the DRC and receive an annual stipend of $1000 as well as recognition on the DRC website.
DRC Fellows commit to attending monthly online team meetings to plan projects that extend the DRC website and its contributions to the community of scholars interested in computers and writing. They work independently and collaboratively to complete two projects within the year of their term.
This year the DRC also welcomes new Sweetland faculty member Sunshine Passwater, who will help support our Fellows as they develop their projects!
Last year’s fellows expanded our website with exciting new content
Marie Pruitt, Robert Beck, and Alex Mashny curated the DRC’s 23rd Blog Carnival, "Digital Circulation in Rhetoric and Writing Studies," which explores how digital technologies and platforms shape the circulation of texts, images, and ideas. Contributors examined topics including collage as socialist circulation, the implications of deepfakes for learning and research, questions of digital publics, and digital linguistic transference from SEO practices to online discourse.
For our DRC “Yack” series, Mehdi Mohammadi contributed two posts exploring the philosophy of technology in rhetoric and writing studies. The first article argues that technology embodies values and assumptions that reshape human agency, urging scholars to examine the ethical and epistemological implications of technological systems rather than viewing them as neutral tools. In his second article, he argues for a postphenomenological turn in rhetorical studies, examining how technological artifacts like social media algorithms shape the conditions under which symbolic communication becomes possible and and legible in the first place.
Toluwani Odedeyi and Thais Cons produced podcast episodes for the DRC Talk Series featuring professionals in Rhetoric and Composition and Technical and Professional Communication who have successfully transitioned beyond academia. Guests included Addison Kliewer on bridging academia and industry with technical writing and Charisse Iglesias on community engagement beyond academia, gathering practical advice and resources for graduate students and early career scholars exploring similar paths.
Additionally, Marie Pruitt issued a call for syllabi focused on writing with data for the DRC Syllabus Repository. In an era characterized by both abundant information and widespread misinformation and disinformation, these resources can help instructors teach students to write effectively with and about data across a range of contexts.
Keep your eyes open for upcoming projects from our new fellows, including a blog carnival on multimodality, social justice, and human-centered praxis; featured posts on data centers and rhetorical infrastructures; as well as a call for syllabi and teaching materials centering social justice-oriented pedagogies.
Mentorship
This year, our fellows have also been matched with a DRC Advisory Board member who shares similar research interests. These mentoring relationships, which will continue through the year, have already provided significant feedback on the academic job search, writing the dissertation, and more!
A Special Opportunity
Finally, to mark the 40th anniversary of the journal Computers and Composition, several of this year’s graduate fellows had the exciting opportunity to interview three generations of the journal’s leadership: founding co-editor Cynthia Selfe, past editor Kristine Blair, and current editor Jason Tham. The DRC connections run deep: Kris Blair is an inaugural DRC Advisory Board member (2012-2023) and Jason Tham is a former DRC Fellow (2017-2018 & 2018-2019) and current Board member! The interview highlights the journal's evolution, editorial processes, mentorship practices, and its human-centered commitments amid current technological and political challenges. Look for it in the Computers and Composition 40th Anniversary Special Issue to be published this spring.
It looks to be an inspiring year of collaboration and innovation with our 2025-2026 DRC Fellows!
The 2025-2026 fellows are:
Ali Alalem is a PhD Candidate in Composition and Rhetoric at The University of Alabama, where he teaches writing across media, technical writing, and first-year composition. His research lies at the intersection of multimodal composition, transformative pedagogy, social justice, and digital rhetorics. He has published in Computers and Composition and enculturation. His dissertation is focused on developing a theoretical and pedagogical framework for leveraging multimodal composition to foster human engagement, agency, and social justice within academic spaces and beyond. His work emphasizes bridging digital literacy gaps and empowering individuals across lines of difference. Beyond his dissertation, he studies digital public discourse in online spaces to reimagine possibilities for timely rhetorical interventions that challenge and resist hegemonic narratives.
Thais Rodrigues Cons is a PhD researcher in Rhetoric, Composition & the Teaching of English at the University of Arizona. With a Master’s in Applied Linguistics and extensive experience in teaching English as an Additional Language, editing, and translating, Thais became acquainted with Writing Studies through her work at one of the first Writing Centers in her home country, Brazil. Her primary research focuses on the rhetorical analysis of technical genres in Brazilian public higher education, connecting her experience in writing centers with her interests in technical and professional communication, translation, and fellowship and grant writing. Having previously received the CPTSC Graduate Student Research Award, IWCA’s Future Leaders Award and Emerging Scholar Award for Pioneering Writing Research in Brazil, Thais aims to contribute to inclusive and accessible writing practices and social justice within Brazilian higher education and to explore how these practices can be transferred and taught to writers in the U.S. and beyond.
Nicole Koyuki Golden (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric, Writing, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Her research interests include technical communication, digital and cultural rhetorics, and Asian/American communities.
Funmilola Fadairo is a PhD student in the Language, Writing, and Rhetoric track within the English Department at the University of Maryland. Her research explores how technological and multimodal forms depict African sensibilities across time.
Erin Miller is a PhD student at UW-Madison researching literacy studies, migration studies, and institutional rhetoric. She’s interested in understanding how governmental institutions use physical and digital resources to dictate the lives of migrants, what literacy and rhetorical practices enable this relationship, and the material consequences of this relationship. Erin is also interested in writing pedagogy, assessment, and information literacy. In addition to being a DRC Fellow, Erin is participating in the 2025-2026 Democracy Building Institute through Document-based Inquiry (DBI2) hosted by the Boise State Writing Project.
Mehdi Mohammadi is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric & Writing at the University of New Mexico where he also teaches Core Writing as a teaching associate. His research focuses on philosophy of technology and posthumanist rhetoric.
