People
Center Graduate Students: Julia Marie Smith
Julia Smith is a doctoral candidate in the Center for Writing Studies in the English Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Contact Information
208 English Building | MC-718
smith118@illinois.edu
Biographical Statement
Smith completed a MA in Rhetoric and Composition at Florida State University. The thesis was entitled “Fortify the City with Your Tempered Pen: “Building Agency in the “City of Ladies” through Text, Paratext, and Media.” This thesis discussed how a medieval woman author, Christine de Pizan, created her rhetorical agency through the layers of her manuscript from text, image, and the medium of the manuscript. She also attended St. Andrews University in Scotland, where she earned a Graduate Diploma in Medieval Literature. For her undergraduate degree, she graduated from Texas State University with a BA in English Literature and a minor in Spanish.
Research Interests
History of rhetoric, specifically the medieval era; recovering women’s history of rhetoric; rhetorical agency; new media studies; and activity theory.
Courses Taught
BTW 250: Principles of Professional Communication
Conference Presentations
2007 Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) conference, the 2007 NCTE conference in New York, and the 2008 Rhetoric Society of America conference.