Graduate Student Spotlights
Current Spotlight
Richard Sylvestre
Ph.D., Rhetoric and Writing Studies
Richard Sylvestre is a 4th-year PhD student in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies Program at Oklahoma State University. He is an Assistant Director in the First Year Composition program, and a long-time teacher of composition who got his start teaching basic writing in an Adult Basic Education program at the University of New Mexico’s Valencia Campus roughly 18 years ago. He is currently working on his first Qualifying Paper and Dissertation Prospectus. His research focus is on Queer Concepts (not just Queer Theory, but Rhetoric, Methodology, Embodiment, Identity, and more), and their interactions with rhetoric, composition, and pedagogy. His dissertation work will seek to interrogate the field of Rhetoric and Composition through journal publication analysis on the term “queer” and its application over a 15-year span; explore understandings and applications of Queer Concepts through interviews with scholars that work with those concepts especially considering current anti-LGBTQ+ politics and rhetorics; and analyze identity disclosure in FYC classrooms and what impacts such disclosure can have. Richard was an inaugural member of the Center for Humanities Research Fellowship (2022-2023) in the Digital Humanities group, and he was Vice President of the English Graduate Student Association (2022-2023). He will be presenting at both the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the Rhetoric Society of America this semester.
