Rock Ethics Institute

Biography

Pamela VanHaitsma’s interdisciplinary scholarship bridges rhetoric, archives and information, and gender and sexuality studies. In her main line of research, she uses archival methods and queer methodologies to study nineteenth-century rhetorical education. Her first book, Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education, is a queer history of epistolary rhetoric (University of South Carolina Press, 2019). Early research for the project was recognized with the Rhetoric Society of America’s 2015 Charles Kneupper Award. Also in her scholarship, Professor VanHaitsma explores the rhetorical and pedagogical dimensions of archives. Her work has appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Advances in the History of Rhetoric, Rhetoric Review, College Composition and Communication, and Peitho, among others. In addition to her role in Communication Arts and Sciences, Professor VanHaitsma serves as associate director of the Center for Humanities and Information and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.