Matthew Pavesich arrived as director of the program in the fall of 2021. He specializes in the teaching of writing, writing program administration, and the public humanities.
His current projects include a large-scale study of self-sponsored writing, or what people write beyond the requirements of work or school; and DC/Adapters, a photographic archive of local visual rhetoric. He also serves on a national committee devoted to the cultivation of public humanities with the Rhetoric Society of America and on the editorial board of the Journal of Basic Writing.
Before coming to Hopkins, Pavesich taught for ten years at Georgetown University, where he received the Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award in 2020. His courses include innovative models for first-year writing, collaborative teaching in the disciplines, introductions to and advanced courses in rhetoric, and graduate courses in the teaching of writing and the public and digital humanities. His work has appeared in enculturation, the WAC Journal, Technoculture, The Journal of Basic Writing, and several edited volumes. Pavesich did his doctoral work in English, specializing in rhetoric at the University of Illinois-Chicago (2009).