Dissertation Dialogues, Vol. 3: John Schilb and Collin Bjork

This is the final episode in Rhetoricity's "Dissertation Dialogues" series, which features conversations between PhD students at Indiana University and some of their dissertation directors and committee members. This particular episode features Collin Bjork and Dr. John Schilb.

Collin Bjork is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at IU. His dissertation develops a theoretical framework for better understanding how rhetoric functions over time. His article “Integrating Usability Testing and Digital Rhetoric in Online Writing Instruction” just came out in a special issue of Computers and Composition. He has taught courses in sonic rhetoric, visual rhetoric, service-learning writing, online composition, multilingual composition, and cross-cultural composition. Collin has also worked as an online instructional designer and as a program assistant for multilingual composition. As a Fulbright English teaching assistant, he taught at the University of Montenegro in Podgorica.

John Schilb is Culbertson Chair of Writing and Professor of English at IU. While at IU, has also served as editor of the journal College English, director of first-year composition, and director of writing and rhetorical studies. He teaches writing, literature, rhetoric, and film. Before coming to Indiana, he taught at Carthage College, Denison University, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and the University of Maryland. From 1984 to 1990, he was vice president of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, a Chicago-based consortium of liberal arts colleges. His book Rhetorical Refusals: Defying Audiences’ Expectations won the Modern Language Association’s Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize. He is also author of Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary Theory and coeditor of four volumes: Making Literature Matter, Arguing About Literature, Writing Theory and Critical Theory, and Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age. In addition, he has published many articles and contributed chapters to several collections. His current book project is a study of nuance as rhetoric. He has a short piece on that topic that just came out in a symposium on virtue ethics in Rhetoric Review.

In this episode, the pair discusses John Schilb’s past and present work between the lines of academic disciplines, his time as the editor of College English, and his current work on nuance as a rhetorical virtue. They also talk about inductive approaches to developing scholarly projects as well as Indiana University’s recently created rhetoric program.

This episode features a clip from the song "Lines" by Glass Boy.