Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois


Spencer Schaffner

Assistant Professor of English and Writing Studies

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Contact Information

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Office Hours

  • instant message me @ "metaspencer"

Education

PhD, University of Washington, 2005

Teaching Interests

web writing, graphic narratives, ecocriticism, innovative academic discourse, writing pedagogy

Courses

English 300: Graphic Novels / English 481: Composition Theory and Practice / English 482: Writing Technologies / English 582: Genre Theory / English 582: Discourse Analysis / English 584: Rhetoric and Social / Engagement / English 584: Writing for the Web, / See course websites at www.metaspencer.com

Research Interests

ecocriticism, science studies, new media, graphic narratives, writing pedagogy

Publications

Book Contributions

  • Dobrin, Sidney , and Morey Sean. "Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, and Nature." Field Guides to Birds: Images and Image/Text Positioned As Reference. Comp. Spencer Schaffner. New York: SUNY UP, 2008.
  • Bawarshi, Anis, and Sidney Dobrin. "The Five-Paragraph Essay: Friend or Foe?." A Closer Look: The Writer's Reader. New York: McGraw Hill, 2003.

Journal Articles

  • Schaffner, Spencer. "Environmental Sporting: Birding at Superfund Sites, Landfills, and Sewage Ponds." Journal of Sport and Social Issues 33.3 (2009): 206-229.
  • Schaffner, Spencer. "Response: Ursula Heise's 'Ecocriticism and the Transnational Turn in American Studies." American Literary History 20.1-2 (2008):
  • Schaffner, Spencer. "Projection: Grounding the Writing Major in the Socio-Graphemic Approach." Composition Studies: Special Issue on The Writing Major 35.1 (2007):
  • Schaffner, Spencer. "Strategic Simulations." JAC 47.3 (2007):

Essays

  • Parris, Brandy, and Spencer Schaffner. "A Cinematic Critique as Public Humanities." Inside Higher Education. 2005. 1 Nov. 2005.
  • "Birding with the First American Field Guides to Birds." Birding. American Birding Association, 2005.

Websites

Reviews

Works in Progress

  • Binocular Vision: Birdwatching, Field Guides, and the Environmental Imagination (book manuscript, under consideration)
  • an article on the science of unintelligible writing
  • with Paul Prior "Bird Identification as a Family of Activities: Motives, Mediating Artifacts, and laminated Assemblages," Outlines: Special Issue on Wildfire Activities, Ed. Yrjö Engeström. (under consideration)