Eileen E. Schell
Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric
Writing Program Chair and Director
eeschell@syr.edu
HBC 239A
315-443-1083

Associate Professor of Writing, Writing Program Director . PhD, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1993. Contemporary composition studies. Feminist theory and feminist composition studies. Rhetorical historiography. 19th and 20th century histories of women's rhetoric. Institutional histories of English studies and higher education. Writing program administration.

As a Scholar
As a scholar in Rhetoric and Composition, I approach the work of the field as a feminist, teacher, rhetorician, and historian. My scholarly interests are, in many ways, a product of my interdisciplinary training in literary studies, critical theory, rhetoric, writing, and women’s studies. My undergraduate and MA degrees in literary studies and feminist theory taught me to be a careful reader of literary and cultural texts and also taught me an appreciation for traditional historical studies of literature and culture. An undergraduate minor in writing sealed my interest in process theories of writing and taught me much about the benefits of a craft-based, workshop-oriented pedagogies. My Ph.D. coursework in English, with a focus in Rhetoric and Composition, provided me with a broad basis for understanding classical and modern theories of rhetoric, theories of rhetorical history and historiography, contemporary writing pedagogies, and feminist and materialist theories. My scholarship draws upon and synthesizes elements of my past training by taking up three specific sites of inquiry within the field of Rhetoric and Composition: feminist theory, pedagogy, and administrative practices; contingent labor issues, and nineteenth century histories of women’s involvement in literacy instruction. The interpretive lens I bring to these historical, rhetorical, and pedagogical/administrative sites is feminist theory with a specific focus on materialist feminisms and feminist historical studies. To examine, for instance, the history of a chronic problem like the field’s reliance on a group of underpaid and overworked part-time writing teachers, I analyze how the teaching of writing has been historically gendered by a set of social and economic power relations. Thus, I blend historical studies of pedagogies and institutions with theoretically informed analyses of contemporary practices and patterns. I am not an antiquarian historian of rhetoric, but one who tries to understand how the present has been shaped by past traditions.

Major Themes
The first three areas of my scholarship-feminist theory, pedagogy, and administrative work; contingent labor issues, and rhetorical histories of women’s involvement in the profession of teaching—are united by a commitment to studying the rhetorical, material, and historical reasons behind the gendered politics and practice of work in composition studies. A governing theme in my scholarship is the “work of the field.” How have we come to view that work in gendered ways? How has the history of literacy instruction and schooling in America been constructed in gendered ways? How can an understanding of our histories and their gendered politics and practices shape and reshape the work of the field?
The themes of my work are inseparable from how I view my role as a faculty member. In the work I do as a scholar, teacher, and administrator, I am working toward the creation of applied knowledge. According to Ernest Boyer, author of Scholarship Reconsidered, applied scholarship is a mode of scholarly inquiry in which the inquirer seeks to answer the question: “How can knowledge be responsibly applied to consequential problems?” (21). I do not see my scholarship as separate from other areas of my life as a faculty member. In my work as a scholar, teacher, administrator, and member of the profession, I have endeavored to serve as a “faculty citizen,” one who engages in intellectual and pedagogical projects that forward the thinking and the practices of the communities to which I belong. Working toward integration of my scholarship, teaching, administrative, and professional work has been a struggle, a balancing act, but it is one that continues to challenge me to think more deeply about my responsibilities as a faculty member, teacher, colleague, mentor, and community member. To me scholarship is “lived practice.” Sometimes the scholarly work I do is published; sometimes it is not, but it is manifested in the curricular and administrative work I do with the service learning initiative via the Vision 2000 grants or the revision of our upper-division writing courses.

Vita [MSWord download]