IWP is pleased to welcome Dr. Linda Di Desidero to the faculty to teach Introduction to Graduate Writing (IWP 643) this summer and fall.
Dr. Di Desidero currently teaches professional writing at World Bank Group in Washington, D.C.; in the U.S. Department of Defense, where she directs the Leadership Communication Skills Center at Marine Corps University; and to postgraduate writers/researchers at the German Development Institute in Bonn, Germany. Throughout her career, she has chaired two academic departments and administered two writing centers that served both academic and professional writers. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in leadership communication, professional communication, composition, linguistics, literature, and education. Dr. Di Desidero holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics (Northwestern University), an Ed.M. in English Education (Rutgers University), and B.A. degrees in English and in German language and literature (Rutgers University).
In addition to her projects on third space writing theory that inform the development of her professional writing courses, Dr. Di Desidero’s most recent research uses methods associated with the ethnography of communication to investigate language and identity within specific educational, workplace, and leadership contexts. Recent publications include “Facework and the Negotiation of Multiple Identities in Online Class Discussion” (Writing in Online Courses, Myer Educational Press, 2018); The Marine Corps University Communications Style Guide, 12th edition (forthcoming 2019); and “A Rose by any Other Name: The Use of Honorifics in University Adult Education” (in The Distance Education Oracle, 2012).
The course she will teach at IWP uses a studio approach to writing that helps students gain control over conventions of academic writing, including rhetorical strategies, paragraph design, and sentence clarity. Using the students’ own writing as a basis for learning, the course aims to help students develop and strengthen their own writing strategies so that they can become more efficient and more effective writers in both academic and political contexts.