Introduction

[Pegeen Reichert Powell]

My introduction will have to be short, because I'm beginning my qualifying
exams on Monday and need to conserve my intellectual energy, but I look
forward to contributing more when the exams are over. I'm a Ph.D. student
at Miami University in Ohio, studying composition, rhetoric, and
sociolinguistics.  My work in composition studies centers around basic
writing, and my interest in women's rhetoric and feminist studies underlies
much of what I do as well.

Genre theory has been important to me as a link between rhetoric and
sociolinguistics.  But lately I have been especially excited about critical
discourse analysis, particularly as theorized by Norman Fairclough, and the
possiblilites CDA holds for a politically charged pedagogy. I'd like to
hear from others on this list who share these interests, but I also have a
lot to learn from those of you with different methodologies and
understandings of what "discourse" is.

I'm already impressed by the enthusiasm and wide range of topics on this
list!

Pegeen Reichert Powell