I’ve been teaching college composition since 1997, since 2008 at Montana State University in Bozeman, and before that at Utah Valley University and the University of Utah, where I earned a ph.d. in Rhetoric & Composition in 2004.
See CV.
Contact me at doug.downs@montana.edu
Exemplified by developing writing majors at both UVU and MSU and directing the Writing Programs of both those institutions, my area of strongest focus is writing and literacy pedagogy, particularly the writing-about-writing pedagogy I developed with Elizabeth Wardle in the mid-2000’s. This approach to writing instruction has become nationally popular and is supported by Wardle’s and my Writing About Writing textbook. I am also a strong proponent of undergraduate research, both on my own campus and nationally, and have served as Editor of Young Scholars in Writing, the national peer-reviewed journal of undergraduate research in rhetoric and writing studies, from 2015-2020.
My research interests within Rhetoric & Writing Studies also include reading practices in screen-literate cultures, writing instructor preparation, and writing in the disciplines—which are all more closely related than they may first appear. All hinge on assessing and shifting both individual and cultural conceptions of writing. The play between cultural and personal conceptions of writing, research, and reading, and people’s processes of and self-efficacy with these, connect most of my curiosities. My preferred research methodologies include critical discourse analysis, corpus-based textual analysis, observational process analysis, storytelling, and reflection.
Classes I’ve taught at MSU include WRIT 205 Introduction to Writing Studies, WRIT 326 Advanced Writing, WRIT 371 Digital Rhetorics and Multimodal Writing, WRIT 372 Science Writing, WRIT 373 News and PR Writing, WRIT 374 Magazine Editing and Publishing, WRIT 376 Public Rhetorics, WRIT 429 Professional Writing, ENGL 450 Rhetoric and Composition, WRIT 494 Seminar in Research and Publication, ENGL 505 Teaching Composition, and ENGL 530 Writing Theory and Practice.
While the focus of this site is professional / teaching, I’ll add that I’m a techie-gearhead whose un-work interests include music of most genres (listening, writing, keys and guitar), A/V and home-theater systems, technology, woodworking, cars, and boats. Like so many in Bozeman, I’m an outdoor kid, enjoying mountain biking, hiking and backpacking, skiing (nordic and alpine), snowshoeing, wheeling, and boating. My reading interests are contemporary: science/tech nonfiction and history of science, crime thrillers, historical fiction, magical-realist novels and short stories, and just plain magic / fantasy. (Yes, Harry Potter. Yes, The Name of the Wind. Yes, The Night Circus. Yes, all things Mark Helprin.)
Doug Downs | Teaching 