COM ' PO ' SI ' TION n. 1. the act of composing, or putting together a whole by combining parts; specif., a) the putting together of words; art of writing [. . .] 2. the makeup of a thing or person; aggregate of ingredients or qualities and manner of their combination [. . .] 4. an arrangement of the parts of a work of art so as to form a unified, harmonious whole.

This definition from Webster's hints at the link between physicality and language, which has always fascinated me as a scholar. While much early scholarship on rhetoric and composition assumed writing to be abstract and in the mind, an increasing amount of emerging scholarship focuses on writing and language as a physical, bodily practice which is enhanced by communication, interaction, and experience.

Throughout my graduate career, I have attempted to integrate the body, or issues of physicality, in much of my scholarship. It formed the foundation for my MA thesis on Margaret Atwood's first novel, and guides the final chapter of my dissertation on cookbooks and multimodal literacy. I am pleased to have found so much quality scholarship on bodily rhetoric and on rhetorical space, as it has encouraged me to dig deeper into this area.

To say that I regard writing as a physical act is, I suppose, to imply that I do not care for overtheoretical abstractions. As my degrees have asked me to consider scholarship in the light of teaching, I do have a more practical bent in my scholarship. I do not philosophize, ruminate, or ramble. Instead, I am focused on the concrete, on the application, on the impact for the field. As a feminist scholar, I feel that considerations of the gendered body are important to the field of rhetoric and composition.

As for future research, my ideal project would entail what Richard Leo Enos calls "rhetorical archaeology," or the study of historical monuments, sites, or locations as potential rhetorical spaces. I, too, believe that scholars need to analyze nontraditional texts rhetorically in order to expand the canon of rhetoric and gain a more accurate picture of the divergent field. I have begun to do this in my graduate work, on a smaller scale. I have uncovered t-shirts, cookbooks, television shows, graphic novels, and diaries as alternative rhetorical practices. In the future, I envision researching larger spaces or monuments, particularly ones which invite human interaction.

As for the present, I plan to pursue an extended ethnographic study of a women's cooking club, in order to expand upon the research and theory set out in my dissertation, in order to publish my research as a book. I also am revising an article for journal publication dealing with print cookbooks and women's reform discourse, and am set to co-author a journal article on localized assessment practices.

As this narrative shows, I do not align myself with any one specific method or theoretical lens. This is because, in keeping with Janice Lauer's characterization of the field as diverse, I want to keep an open mind as a scholar and continue to experiment with different methods and theories. I refuse to believe that a scholar should stick with one methodology for their career. Because of this, I feel that I am growing as a scholar and will continue to have new ideas to contribute.