Threshold Conscripts: Rhetoric and Composition Teaching Assistantships

This richly textured edited collection explores the ways in which graduate teaching assistants are prepared to enter the field of rhetoric and composition. By viewing teaching and learning from the perspective of the TAs themselves, the chapters, personal narratives, and program profiles that make up this collection speak to the diversity and complexity found within and beyond university walls and deepen our understanding of how these preparation programs shape TA identities and practices. Through their stories and reports, the contributors to this volume provide valuable insights into the programs, realities, and experiences that shape their work in rhetoric and composition.

William J. Macauley Jr. is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he has been the University Writing Center director (2011-2015) and served as director of the Composition and Communication in the Disciplines program (2015-2019). Macauley has been teaching since 1987 and leading writing centers and programs since 1990. He has authored more than 20 professional publications and taken on leadership roles in multiple international, national, regional and local professional organizations.

Leslie R. Anglesey (she/her) is Assistant Professor of rhetoric and composition in the department of English at Sam Houston State University. Her research interests focus on disability studies, composition pedagogy, mentorship, and rhetorics of health and medicine. She is a co-editor of the collection Standing at the Threshold: Liminality and the Rhetoric and Composition TAship (Utah State University Press). Her work has also appeared in College Composition and Communication, Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments, The Peer Review, and Works and Days, as well as the edited collections Interrogating Gendered Pathologies and Strategic Interventions in Mental Health Rhetorics.

Brady Edwards is Professor of English at New Mexico Junior College, where he teaches developmental writing, first-year composition, and sophomore literature courses. His first co-edited collection Standing at the Threshold: Working Through Liminality in the Composition and Rhetoric TAship was published by Utah State University Press in 2021. Besides teaching assistantships, Brady is interested in writing program administration, contingent labor, and first-year composition. He has published essays and reviews in The Peer Review, Southern Discourse in the Center, and Literature and Belief.

Kathryn Lambrecht completed her Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition at the University of Nevada, Reno and is currently Assistant Professor of Technical Communication at Arizona State University, Polytechnic. Her research draws on rhetoric, corpus linguistics, composition theory, and data visualization to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration as well as communication between experts and public audiences, particularly in STEM environments. Her research has been published in Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Bulletin of American Meteorological Society, and Journal of General Education. Her interdisciplinary focus has led her to work with the National Weather Service, public health, engineering communication, identity studies, and writing in the disciplines.

Phillip K. Lovas is Lecturer in the Karen Merritt Writing Program at the University of California, Merced, where he teaches courses in first-year writing and research, professional writing, upper division academic writing, and interdisciplinary seminars for first-year students. The Karen Merritt Writing Program has an interdisciplinary approach to writing that offers students the opportunity to work with creative writing, professional writing, and writing in the disciplines. His research interests are focused on students’ writing in the disciplines, professional and technical communication, genre theories, and how students transfer information beyond the classroom.