Composition and Rhetoric
Social engagement and transformation through writing, rhetoric, and literacy
Our composition and rhetoric program is committed to writing as an expression of social justice, civic engagement, and community partnership. We understand writing pedagogies to be inextricably linked to the work of anti-racism, as well as feminist and queer praxis. We frame this work as “imaginative reasoning,” a deeply complex intellectual, creative, and political process. We use the phrase “imaginative reasoning” to capture all the ways we come to know our place, identities, and positions in the world through writing. Reasoning expresses the writer’s ability to understand the complex interplay of logical, emotional, and ethical approaches to literacy, composition, and pedagogy. Toward this end, our undergraduate and graduate students are invited to engage in the radical work of revision, of reframing again and again how we look at the world, at texts, and at ourselves.
Our Core Principles
Writing is a meaningful, purposeful, and political practice.
The strongest writing emerges from writers who are invested in their projects, so we regularly invite students to develop their own purposes for composing. We view writing as valuable not only during college, but also throughout one’s personal, professional, social, and civic life.
How we define “good writing” is contextual, shaped by race, sexuality, gender, and culture.
We analyze with students how ideas of “good” and “correct” writing are shaped by race, sexuality, gender, class, ability and culture, and we consider what kinds of writing, and which writers, may be excluded by those standards in order to question these practices and to intervene in longstanding conversations in composition.
Writing is increasingly multimodal and digital.
As we shape and participate in an evolving digital world, we engage students in composing and critically analyzing online and multimodal texts. English Department faculty serve as leaders in digital projects at Nebraska’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, and our program values cross-disciplinary digital scholarship, pedagogy, and writing.
Writing, reading, and teaching are transformative processes.
These processes allow us to create knowledge with others, engage new perspectives, rethink our own, and ultimately, to discover new possibilities for understanding, imagining, and acting in the world.
Self-reflexivity, curiosity, and social consciousness are key to both writing and learning.
Students regularly reflect on their writing choices and their intended effects. Reflection is a key component of revision; as we understand the choices we’ve made, we can imagine new ways of creating texts and to see and re-see the world we live in and the world we want to live in.
Writing and the teaching of writing are collaborative processes.
At all levels of our program, writers and teachers work together across boundaries and through community engagement to create effective texts for a variety of purposes and communities. Our teachers develop their classes in collaboration with other teachers (often across grade levels), and our program’s many research projects involve collaborative inquiry.
Responsible, ethical inquiry and argument occur when differences are meaningfully engaged.
We are committed to fostering learning that encourages students to partake in the important civic process of recognizing the complexity and richness of human difference as they read, write, and converse with one another.
Statement of Values
Writing and teaching are social practices that are both shaped by and shape identity, politics, and culture. For this reason, we view human difference in all its forms as intrinsic to the study, practice, and teaching of writing and rhetoric; it is a central component of all the work we do in the Composition and Rhetoric program.
Our vision of a just community is one in which all forms of oppression—sexism, racism, homophobia, classism and ableism—are confronted and discussed. We believe responsible, ethical inquiry and argument can occur only in contexts that actively support, and not merely include, members of and ideas from marginalized groups. We strive to create teaching and learning spaces in which differences are seriously and meaningfully engaged. We seek to enact our commitment to these principles through the following practices:
- a rhetorically-based curriculum that calls for the study and practice of writing as an epistemic and socio-political act involving nuanced attention to purposes, audiences, and situations
- meaningful engagement of wide range of course materials
- pedagogical methodologies that purposefully and attentively include the voices and ideas of writers of color, LGBTQA+ writers, feminist writers, writers with disabilities, and writers from various cultures classroom teaching
- Writing Center consulting that encourages students to recognize the complexity and richness of human difference (according to language, gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, religion, politics) as they read and compose texts of various kinds
- respect for the various languages (including varieties of World Englishes) that are in use inside and beyond our program
- efforts to recruit graduate students and faculty from many backgrounds and identities
- the development of a dynamic learning community for teachers that values differences among individual teacher-scholars
We understand these principles and practices as interrelated and ongoing.
(UNL Composition Faculty 2008, revised by institutional request 2025)
UNIVERSITY of NEBRASKA–LINCOLN
Established 1869 · Copyright 2025
Community Engagement and Writing Programs
Husker Writers is a network of secondary teachers, college instructors, and community partners who collaborate to sponsor critical and creative literacies, public writing, and meaningful community action beyond the classroom.
Ignited by UNL’s Composition and Rhetoric program’s former MA students, Reagan Myers and Gina Tranisi, UNL's Slam Poetry team is a proud part of our English Department and competes each year at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI).
Young Writers Camp is a two-week long program for high school writers hosted by the Nebraska Writing Project and both our Composition and Rhetoric and Creative Writing programs.
The Nebraska Writers Collective is a non-profit that exists to promote creative writing and performance poetry throughout the Midwest.
The Nebraska Writing Project (NeWP) works to invigorate, enrich, and educate by connecting educators, scholars, and writers across disciplines and at all levels.
Located in Andrews Hall, the Writing Center offers workshops and free one-on-one consulting to all members of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln community.
The Writing Lincoln Initiative (WLI) is an organization founded in 2012 by University of Nebraska-Lincoln English department graduate students that seeks to both demystify and facilitate opportunities to enjoy writing.
Faculty
Debbie Minter
Composition pedagogy and program administration, teacher research and faculty development, writing development, and digital learning environments
Rachel Azima
Writing center studies, especially social justice in the writing center, writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines, faculty development, ecocriticism and place studies
Mavis Boatemaa Beckson
African Feminisms, Digital and Cultural Media, Global Black feminisms, Writing and Cultural Material Practices, Human and Non-Human Relationality, Composition, Rhetoric, and Multicultural Pedagogies
Rachael W. Shah
Composition and rhetoric, community-based pedagogies, collaborative writing, public rhetorics, participatory methodologies, and teaching of writing
Stacey Waite
Composition, rhetoric, and literacy, queer theory/queer pedagogies, teaching of writing, feminist and gender studies, and creative writing/poetry
Shari Stenberg
Composition and rhetoric, critical and feminist pedagogies, feminist rhetorics, and teaching and writing development
June Griffin*
Pedagogy, basic writing and college access, teaching with technology, learning transfer, and digital rhetoric. * Primary administrative
Amy Goodburn*
Composition, rhetoric, literacy studies, critical and multicultural pedagogies, ethnographic and teacher research, community/school literacy practices, and documenting and assessing teaching and learning in postsecondary education. * Primary administrative