Q and A with Stephanie Hedge

Director of Composition, Associate Professor of English

Where did you go for your undergraduate education?

The University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

Where did you go for your graduate education?

My MA was also at U of W. Ph.D. was at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

What was your major(s)?

I have a BA in English Language and Literatures, with a minor in Anthropology, an MA in English Language and Literatures, and a Ph.D. in English--Rhetoric and Composition.

What inspired you to be in this profession?

I knew that I always wanted to be a teacher—I have a passion for learning and educating and language. I decided to forgo teachers college and attend graduate school for my MA (a decision born of out spite), and I found myself struggling with the focus on literature. However, I was given a graduate assistantship that required me to teach first year composition and had to take a graduate course in composition pedagogy. I discovered the field of rhetoric and composition and fell in love with it—the dual focus on education and writing, the theories about the ways that words do work in the world, the possibilities for change and making a real difference in what I was doing. I remember reading Relations, Locations, Positions and A Guide to Composition Pedagogies (books my friends and I would refer to as the blue and green bibles) and just having my mind blown at the possibilities and promise of this field, and learning these theories alongside teaching was so invigorating and powerful. I jumped feet-first into the field and haven’t looked back since.

What inspires you about your career?

The students, first and foremost, especially when thinking about the first-year writing program. I am both inspired by the incredible work that they are doing, and inspired to do right by them—I know that for so many of our students, college represents an opportunity to make a change in their lives, and I want to create classes that help them succeed, both here in college and in the wider world. I believe in the power of words and language to make meaningful change in the world, and I want to empower students to be agents of that change. And when I hear them talk in class, or read their work, I know that they are going to do great things. I am also a digital literacies scholar, and I am inspired daily by the ever-changing digital landscape—the good, the bad, the ugly, and the TikTok trend. Understanding how we are both shaping and shaped by emergent technologies is vital, exciting, and urgent work.

What is something you would tell a prospective student about your academic program?

Did you know that people who speak Russian can see more shades of the color blue than non-Russian speakers? This is because the language distinguishes between different shades—knowing more words for ‘Blue’ allows you to see nuances between the colors (as anyone who has ever painted a room and learned the difference between “white,” “eggshell,” and “bone” can tell you). The more words that we have to describe the world around us, the more nuances we can see in it. English Studies scholars are custodians of the word: we spend time thinking about how words are written, read, interpreted, studied, shared, changed, and loved. Our program is designed to help students see more shades in the world around us, and as a writer, to create those shades (and in so doing, change the world).

What do you like about UIS?

I like our small class sizes and getting to know our students personally—and finding ways for them to succeed and thrive. I like our focus on the liberal arts, a cornerstone of higher education that seeks to build an informed citizenship who can make change in the world. I like the smart, engaged, passionate, and dedicated colleagues that I work with. And I like our students, who are hardworking, curious, thoughtful, creative, and fun—they are the reason I am here, and the reason for UIS to exist at all.

Why is your academic program important to you?

English Studies is important to me because it provides a space for hope and action. There are times when I read the news and feel hopeless about the state of the world—the hurts are so many, and the challenges are so great, that it feels like nothing will ever change. But language is a site for change; real, meaningful change that begins with shifting ontologies and ideologies—that is, changing the ways that people think about the world around them. Rhetoric, my specific field of study, is about language that moves the listener to action. My program gives me hope when things are bleak, and it gives me a course of action when I feel powerless.

Why is your academic program important to society?

Our society is governed and bounded by language—in formal ways, like the laws that we write, and in less tangible ways, like how common understandings of words change how we see each other. All of our thinking, our knowledge and our truths, are mediated through language. Learning how to interpret, analyze, compose, and publish language—learning how to wield the word—is a necessary skill for the continued functioning of society, and a crucial lever for making change in the world.

What is some of your recent work?

My most recent work has been split between my position as the writing program administrator, and my work in games studies and digital literacies. I co-edited a first year writing textbook, published in 2021, with a former UIS graduate student, which is centered on the idea that contemporary writing is always already embedded in digital contexts and mediated through digital technologies and that this writing is always already embedded in public, civic, and social contexts. The book includes contributions from current UIS instructors and other former graduate students, as well as other voices in the field. I also have a piece forthcoming in a special issue of WPA: Writing Program Administration on being a WPA during the time of COVID, and I will be presenting a workshop at the CPWA conference with a colleague this summer on writing a textbook as a WPA. I have also a few pieces in games studies and digital literacies accepted for publication, including a forthcoming piece in a Post45 cluster on roleplaying games that looks at how the people who “act” in actual play role playing games navigate the tensions of performing themselves for an audience, a piece in a dossier on actual play roleplaying games in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies that looks at race, gender, and sexuality in Dimension 20’s “A Court of Fey and Flowers,” and a chapter in the book From Wine Moms to QAnon: The Violence at the Heart of White Women’s Wellness Culture that looks at the social media hashtag #freebirth to explore how the fear of medical violence drives pregnant people into dangerous and fringe online communities.

You can see the textbook that Dr. Hedge has co-edited.

Interviewer: McKenna Vereeke