Faculty & Staff
Wendy K. Z. Anderson
PhD, Purdue University (expected Fall 2008)
Instructor in Emergent Media
Office: Walker 334
Phone: (906) 487-3240
eMail: wkzander @ mtu.edu
wSite: http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~wkzander
Blog: http://www.wendykzanderson.org
I come from a critical feminist and womanist, race, rhetoric, and technology theoretical perspectives. Through my multidisciplinary scholarship I seek to expand past research, develop theory, and forward applied research in the theoretical areas of identity, rhetoric, and power. I seek to understand poststructural and postmodernist expressions of identity/ies to explain how people shape meaning from their experiences to influence the communities we live in. My scholarship engages the contextual spaces of the Internet, gaming, and mobile phones. I delve further into topics such as multiplicity, prosthesis, interface, learning styles, literacy, embodiment, values, disciplinary mechanisms, dis/empowement, agency, activism, and affinity building. I value multiple research approaches and methods, but rely heavily on rhetorical and qualitative approaches due to the questions I study.
I understand scholarship as a process of responding to the contexts I encounter. As part of academic dialogue, I intend my work to challenge and inspire others to continue their academic journeys; specifically in the areas of identity, rhetoric, and power that continue to shape people's physical and online lives.
Currently I am working on a co-authored, multidisciplinary study with Juliette Ludeker (at Purdue) to be presented in Coventry, England at the 2008 Women in Games conference. My work has also appeared in Women and Language.