Nexus presents the traditional rhetorical modes as different ways of thinking about our contemporary world, no matter the medium. It builds on students’ multimedia communication skills by using a mix of readings in contemporary and traditional genres to improve students’ college writing skills.
Nexus starts where students’ interests lie―with engaging essays, interviews, blog conversations, Web sites, and YouTube videos. These “readings” are presented in a lively, highly visual format that draws on the daily environment in which students are immersed, including electronic and visual sources that are stimulating, energizing, and directly related to topics they are studying.
While the format of Nexus is contemporary and stimulating, the content is substantive and pedagogically sound. Students are asked continually throughout this text to pull ideas from multiple media and respond to them first with critical thinking and writing and then by creating a project through a written, oral, visual, or electronic medium of their own choice.
Kim Flachmann teaches at the California State University, Bakersfield, where she also administers the Composition Program―from remedial English through the Graduate Teaching Assistants. She was chosen Outstanding Professor at CSUB in 1998-99. She also was Rhetorician of the Year for the Young Rhetoricians’ Conference in 2007 and was the recipient of the California Association of Teachers of English Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009. She has published numerous articles on rhetoric and American literature and has written seven textbooks―among them a college reader (The Prose Reader (Pearson) in its eleventh edition), a series of three books for developmental English called Mosaics: Reading and Writing Sentences, Mosaics: Reading and Writing Paragraphs, and Mosaics: Reading and Writing Essays,
(Pearson), and Nexus: A Rhetorical Reader for Writers (Pearson), which combines traditional rhetorical modes with students’ interest in
technology.
Kim has dedicated her career to helping students achieve their goals in life through communication. Her mission has always been to teach others how to write well, which she believes is one of the most important gifts we can give our students. She believes that reading and writing are the gateways to each student’s full potential and success in life.
