X
Search
Menu

Department of English

Nationally Ranked Badge
Home Department of English People William Duffy

William Duffy

Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies

Phone
901.678.2651
Email
weduffy@memphis.edu
Fax
901.678.2226
Office
Patterson Hall 445
Office Hours
Call for Hours
William Duffy

Education

B.A., Elon University
M.A., University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Academic Summary

Dr. Duffy specializes in composition and rhetorical theory, with particular interests in collaborative writing, first-year composition, and the institutional history of writing studies. He is also interested in discourse ethics, pragmatist philosophy, and religious rhetoric. From 2014-16, he served as the founding director of the UofM's Center for Writing and Communication.

Recent Publications

  • "Trump's Thumbs: Pollice Verso and the Spectacle of Ambiguity." Rhetoric Society Quarterly (April 2023. doi: 10.1080/02773945.2022.2146167.
  • "Doubt". Coauthored with John Pell. Democracies in America: Keywords for the 19th Century and Today. Ed. Berton Emerson and Gregory Laski. Oxford University Press, 2022. 270-79. 
  • "On Promoting Democratic Communication." "5 Things to Think About" Series, Commonplace. Knowledge Futures Group. 28 November 2022. 
  • "Agentic Discord in Writing Studies: Toward Autoethnographic Accounts of Disciplinary Lore." Self-Culture Writing: Autoethnography for/as Writing Studies, 149-158. (2021). 
  • Beyond Conversation: Collaboration and the Production of Writing. Utah State University Press. 2020. 
  • "Practically Wise and Good: Understanding Phronesis as a Rhetorical Virtue." After Plato: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing, 37-50.
  • "Locate First, Invent Second." Explanation Points: Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. 2019, 177-79.
  • "The Indecorous Objects of Social Transformation." Coauthored with John Pell. Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society 7.1 (2018).
  • "Freire in the Agora: Critical Pedagogy and Civil Discourse." Coauthored with John Pell. Literacy in Composition Studies 3.1 (2015): 95-107.
  • "Transforming Decorum: The Sophistic Appeal of Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel." Mapping Christian Rhetorics: Connecting Conversations, Charting New Territories. 2014. 222-39.