Roxanne Mountford

Roxanne Mountford teaches courses in writing and rhetoric at the undergraduate and graduate level. In her academic work, she studies rhetoric in the United States context, particularly rhetorical education and gender issues in rhetoric. Her first book, The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces, develops a material and cultural understanding of communicative events in order to explore gender norms in the art of preaching. It is combines theoretical, ethnographic, and historical methods to define the concept of rhetorical space. Her second book (with Michelle Ballif and Diane Davis), Women’s Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition, offers primary and secondary research on women’s career paths in the field. In 2017, she also published a co-edited collection with Cheryl Glenn titled Rhetoric and Writing Studies in the New Century: Historiography, Pedagogy, and Politics. Currently, she is serving as co-chair of the 2018 50th Anniversary Rhetoric Society of America Conference; in the past, she has served the RSA as an elected Board Member and a member of the Editorial Board of Rhetoric Society Quarterly. In addition, she has served as chair of several committees for the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Prof. Mountford’s current project explores the relationship of writing and public speaking in high schools and colleges in the United States in the twentieth century prior to 1971. She is particularly interested in the communications movement in general education, which engaged interdisciplinary faculties in teaching reading, writing, listening, and speaking through an integrated vision of these communication arts. With Bill Keith, she has worked to develop an interdisciplinary perspective on rhetorical education that bridges rhetorical expertise in Writing Studies and Communication. With Keith and the members of their 2013 Rhetoric Society of America seminar participants, they published “The Mount Oread Manifesto on Rhetorical Education,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2014, which calls for reforms in the teaching of speech and writing. In addition, she is working with members of her First-Year Composition Program team on a book about the University of Oklahoma Model of Rhetorical Education.

Prof. Mountford holds the MA and PhD in English/Rhetoric and Composition from The Ohio State University. She received her BA in English from Malone College with honors. She has served on the faculties of Rensselaer Polytechnic, the University of Arizona, and the University of Kentucky, where she developed the Writing Program into the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies. Her awards include the University of Arizona Foundation Leicester and Kathryn Sherrill Creative Teaching Award (1999) and the Faculty Center for Instructional Innovation Creative Use of Technology Award (1999), both for innovations in undergraduate education.

Rhetoric and Writing Studies in the New Century: Historiography, Pedagogy, and Politics (edited with Cheryl Glenn). Southern Illinois University Press, 2017.

Women’s Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition (with Michelle Ballif and Diane Davis). Routledge, 2008.

The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces. Studies in Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s). Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.