Chris Mays
  • Home
  • Teaching
    • Syllabus: Multimodal Writing and Visual Rhetoric: Text, Image, Culture
    • Syllabus: Rhetorical Histories of Scientific Communication: Theories of Sustainability and Ecology
    • Syllabus: Renaissance Through Contemporary Rhetoric
    • Syllabus: Interdisciplinary Studies--The Rhetoric of American Social Policy
    • Handout: "The Complexity in/of Writing"
    • Sample Assignment from Multimodal Writing and Visual Rhetoric: Text, Image, Culture
    • Sample Assignment from English 283 Rhetorical Theory and Applications
    • Sample Assignment from English 246: Rhetoric and Professional Writing
  • Rhetoric Links
  • Research/CV

Welcome to my academic website. The site contains a variety of info on my research and teaching. If you're looking for the short version: I'm an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, where I teach rhetoric and writing in the English Department. I earned my PhD in English Studies, with a specialization in Rhetoric and Composition, from Illinois State University. A bit more specifically, my research focuses on the implications of complexity and systems theory in various contexts in rhetoric and writing studies. For example, two of my current research projects examine how writing functions in complex and dynamic environments (one explores conceiving writing as a system, and one [forthcoming] looks at how complexity might shift our understanding of writing, "facts," and genre). Another project looks at arguments as stable systems--basically, why some conversations look to be pervaded by "stubbornness."  I'm also in the middle of a larger project that examines other ramifications of complexity theory for writing--for instance, how we might look for and trace what I'd call the "invisible effects" of writing.

For more info on my research click here--that page also includes a brief description/excerpt from my and my co-editors' recently published collection, Kenneth Burke + The Posthuman. For teaching and more rhetoric related info, tools, etc, click any of the headers and links on the site.

Finally, you can email me at cmays@unr.edu.

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