The Source Awakens: An Interview with Derek Mueller

Rhetoricity returns, coming to you from its new home base: Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee! MTSU's Department of English hosts an annual event called the Peck Research on Writing Symposium. In 2016, that symposium featured a presentation by Dr. Derek Mueller, Associate Professor of Written Communication and Director of the First-Year Writing Program at Eastern Michigan University. This episode features an interview recorded during his visit.

Mueller's work has appeared in the journals College Composition and Communication, Composition Forum, Kairos, and Present Tense. He has two forthcoming book projects: Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies and Network Sense: Methods for Visualizing a Discipline. In this interview, Dr. Mueller discusses tracking and studying citation practices in writing pedagogy and writing studies research, the concept of chora, ways of challenging the divide between qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and how visual models can enrich rhetoric, composition, and writing studies. Oh, and Star Wars.

This episode features clips from the following:

• "Strong Bad Email #91: Caffeine"
• John Williams - "Rey Meets BB-8"
• Looper Official Trailer
• "Chicago Teachers Strike is Biggest in a Generation"
• CBS Sports' coverage of Serena Williams' 2012 US Open victory
• Lost
• "Freestyle Finger Snapping"
• freesound.org