David Gold

I'm an Associate Professor of English, Women's and Gender Studies, and Education at UM and a member of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. My work in women's studies focuses on the history of women's rhetorics, with a particular emphasis on women's rhetorical education and participation in the public sphere.

Teaching Interests: I love teaching at UM and offer a variety of courses in rhetoric, writing, and women's and gender studies. Recent undergraduate offerings include Dangerous Women—Activism in the Progressive Era, Women’s Rhetorics from Suffrage to Today, Literacy in a Digital Age, and Writing for the Real World. Recent graduate courses include Literacies in American Life and What Is Writing For? Pedagogy and Purpose in Contemporary Writing Studies. As much as possible, I try to make my courses hands-on through student-led discussions, in-class workshops, and opportunities for research. I also try to help students to produce writing they would be proud sharing with an audience outside of class. In my Magazine Writing course, students publish an online current affairs magazine, The Mich, focusing on issues of interest to local readers, and in my women’s rhetoric courses, students apply feminist principles to editing Wikipedia, a powerful yet male-dominated knowledge-making space.

Scholarly interests: My scholarly interests include the history of rhetoric, rhetorical theory, composition pedagogy, and public and professional writing. I am particularly interested in women's rhetorical practices and the voices of marginalized rhetors, and much of my work examines how non-elite populations of students (female, African American, rural, first-generation, Southern) have historically used their rhetorical education in public and professional spheres. I have written, coauthored, or coedited four volumes: Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873-1947 (2008) recipient of the 2010 CCCC Outstanding Book Award; the collection Rhetoric, History, and Women’s Oratorical Education: American Women Learn to Speak (2013, coedited with Catherine Hobbs); Educating the New Southern Woman: Speech, Writing, and Race at the Public Women’s Colleges, 1884-1945 (2014, coauthored with Catherine Hobbs); and the collection Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor in the US, 1830-1950 (2019, coedited with Jessica Enoch).

I am also interested in how technologies of literacy affect writing practices: this work includes a coedited a special issue of College English on integrating digital humanities and historiography in rhetoric and composition and, with two (now-graduated!) UM PhD students, an article for Composition Forum examining the rhetorical challenges students experience in online writing. I am currently working with two graduate students on a CCCC grant-supported project to survey student online writing practices; a preview of our work appears here.