Biography
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).
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Publications
“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 (revised and resubmitted).
“A Public Humanities Experiment: DC/Adapters, 2013-Present,” Routledge Companion to Publicly Engaged Humanities Scholarship. Eds. Michelle May Curry and Daniel Fisher Livne. Routledge (forthcoming 2023).
“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
Professional Memberships
Council of Writing Program Administrators