Matthew Pavesich is Director of the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. After receiving his PhD (2009) at the University of Illinois-Chicago in English with a focus on rhetoric and writing, he taught at Roosevelt University (Chicago) and Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.), where he received the Provost’s Innovation in Teaching award, before arriving at JHU in 2021. His most recent research focuses on adaptation in writing, in both visual rhetoric (dcadapters.org) and everyday or “self-sponsored” writing. More generally, his research and teaching areas are writing, rhetoric, design, pedagogy, and the public humanities. His work appears in several journals and edited volumes, and he began service in 2024 as the public humanities officer of the Rhetoric Society of America. More information, including a C.V., can be found at matthewpavesich.me.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
“A Public Humanities Experiment: DC/Adapters, 2013-Present,” Routledge Companion to Publicly Engaged Humanities Scholarship. Eds. Michelle May Curry and Daniel Fisher-Livne. Routledge (2024).
“A Taxonomy of Life Writing: Exploring the Functions of Meaningful Self-Sponsored Writing in Everyday Life,” Written Communication. With Heather Lindeman, Dana Driscoll, Andrea Efthymiou, and Jennifer Reid (2024).
“Writing to Learn Beyond the University,” Writing Beyond the University: Preparing Lifelong Learners for Lifewide Writing. Eds. Julia Bleakney, Jessie Moore, and Paula Rosinski. Center for Engaged Learning’s Open Access Book Series at Elon University (North Carolina). With Dana Driscoll, Andrea Efthymiou, Heather Lindeman, and Jennifer Reid (2022).
“Failing Forward: Writing, Design, and Organic Curricular Change at Georgetown University,” Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First Century Undergraduate Education. Eds. William Moner, Philip Motley, and Rebecca Pope-Ruark. Johns Hopkins U.P. With Margaret Debelius and Sherry Lee Linkon (2020).
“Learning as Coordination: Postpedagogy + Design,” enculturation. With Steph Ceraso (2019).
“For More Than Display: D.C.’s Adaptable Flag,” Washington History: A Publication of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. 30.2 (Fall 2018).
“An Affordance Approach to WAC Sustainability and Development,” The WAC Journal 26 (Fall 2015): 22-35. With Sherry Lee Linkon.
“Field Notes on Activist Objects,” Technoculture 4 (2014).
“Reflecting on the Liberal Reflex: Rhetoric and the Politics of Acknowledgement in Basic Writing,” Journal of Basic Writing 30.2 (2011): 84-109.
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- (Re-printed in Parlor Press’ yearly volume The Best of the Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals)
Projects
DC/Adapters (www.dcadapters.org)(2013 – ), a digital archive of local visual rhetoric
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- Featured in “The red stars and stripes of D.C.’s flag lend themselves to all sorts of creativity” by John Kelly in The Washington Post, 18 January 2015
- Registered on the National Humanities Alliance’s Humanities for All database and the Rhetoric Society of America’s Rhetorics for All database
Downloading Statehood, a DC/Adapters video, funded by Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice
Writing Beyond The University Research Seminar (2019-2022), at Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning
Council of Writing Program Administrators