Issues in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media
This site and all session materials are designed following Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. Each session provides multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression. If any material presents an access barrier for you, please contact me and we will find an alternative.
All milestones use threshold grading — Complete & Substantive · Nearly There / In Revision · Not Yet Complete. No points. No rubric scores. Honest assessment of intellectual work.
Not a CV summary. A statement of intellectual purpose, written in your own voice — what questions drive you, what animates your research, and why any of it matters. ~500 words.
AI may be used for brainstorming or light editing. The substance must be yours — your voice, your convictions. A statement written by AI cannot do what this milestone asks.
A working draft of your comp exam reading list with full citations, plus a rationale paragraph arguing the intellectual logic of your configuration. Not a catalog — an argument about what your project needs.
Evidence that committee formation is genuinely underway — not just planned. The people you ask will shape your project and your relationship to the field for years. This makes the process real.
The most consequential document you'll write before the dissertation itself. An argument that there is a real problem worth investigating, you are positioned to investigate it, and you have a principled method for doing so.
AI may be used for brainstorming or editing. Problem framing, scholarly situatedness, methodological argument, and stakes must be yours.
Shared critical vocabulary, scholarly identity, and cohort formation. Readings: Giroux · Benjamin · Mbembe · Brown.
Candidacy work begins — exam lists and committees. Readings: Federici · Fisher · Derrida · Haraway.
Rigorous, situated imagination. Prospectus drafting, peer workshopping, and forward vision. Readings: Marcuse · Ghosh.