Nick Sanders

Assistant Professor of Writing
Office: ODH 316
Phone: 248-370-4137
Email: [email protected]

Biography

Nick Sanders (he/him) is an assistant professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Oakland University. He earned his Ph.D. in Writing and Rhetoric from Michigan State University in 2023, his M.A. in English with a concentration in Composition Pedagogy from the University of Maine Orono in 2018.

Sanders is also a certified teacher-consultant for the National Writing Project. Sanders is a queer scholar-practitioner committed to justice-centered institutional change through antiracist and queer approaches to writing pedagogy, campus leadership and public and professional writing.

Sanders has taught undergraduates, graduates and faculty members at a variety of open-access institutions and research-focused universities. He has taught courses such as first-year writing, research writing, writing center theory and practice, antiracist writing pedagogies, digital writing, gender studies and community literacy studies. Sanders’ teaching practice centers un/learning to invite students to interrogate their identities, diversify their academic and professional skill sets, and participate in multiple genres to engage authentic audiences and contexts.

His research examines the intersections of antiracism, professional and community writing, and queer and feminist rhetorics. Sanders’ research appears in College Composition and Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, The Peer Review, The Writing Center Journal, and MLA Profession. Sanders is co-editing a special issue for The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, titled “Composing at the Intersections: Queer, Transgender, and Feminist Approaches to Multimodal Rhetorics.” He is currently drafting pieces on critical qualitative research traditions in writing studies, neo-abolitionist literacies, and rhetorical constructions of permission structures in state-level legislation.

Sanders has held various leadership roles where he commits to cultivating an engaged campus that honors and uplifts the teaching of writing. At his former institution, Sanders served as Director of the Center for Teaching, where he identified and led campus-wide teaching and learning initiatives, and served as Director of University Writing, where he led first-year writing, writing across the curriculum, and the writing center. At Michigan State, Sanders served as Assistant Director of the Writing Center and led the center’s graduate student support initiatives, internal staff development program, assessment, and writing across campus workshop programs. Sanders is also the founding coordinator of Michigan State’s community writing center, a partnership between East Lansing Libraries and Michigan State, hosting open consulting hours and youth and adult writing workshops and contest. He also served as a co-Principal Investigator on a National Endowment of the Humanities grant to support community involvement in five branches of the Lansing library system.

Education

Ph.D. in Writing and Rhetoric, Michigan State University, 2023
M.A. in English (Writing Studies Concentration), University of Maine Orono, 2018
B.A. in English Literature, The College of Saint Rose, 2016
A.A. in Liberal Arts & Sciences, SUNY Fulton-Montgomery Community College, 2014

Selected Publications

Meadows, B., & Sanders, N. (in press). Embracing Complexity: A Three Realm Approach to Engage Contemporary Political Landscapes. MLA Professions.

Sanders, N., Pouncil, F., Pregent G., Smith T., Aguliar-Smith, S. (In Press. December 2023) Making Good on Our Promises to Language Justice: Spheres of Coalitional Possibilities across the Discipline. College Composition and Communication, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 360-388.

Aguliar-Smith, S., Pouncil, F., &  Sanders, N. (2022). Departing To a Better World: Advancing Linguistic Justice Through Staff Professional Development. The Peer Review, vol. 6, no. 1.

Pouncil, F., & Sanders, N. (2022) The Work Before A Coalitional Alliance Heuristic to Move Toward Black Futures in Technical Communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, Special Issue: Black Technical and Professional Communication, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 283-297.

Sanders, N., Pregent, G., & Bauer, L. (in press). Orienting Public Pedagogues: A Black Feminist Approach to Community-Engaged Writing Center Work. Public Feminisms: From Academy to Community, edited by Carrie Baker and Aviva Dove-Viebahn, pp. 425-446.

Sanders, N. Scyborgs in Undergraduate Consultant Education: Learning Projects for Queer Writing Center Futurities. In Smith, T., Dixon, E., & Pouncil, F., Queer Writing Center Praxis. WAC Clearinghouse. (invited submission).

Hawks, A., & Sanders, N. Fostering Linguistic Consciousness through Feedback Practices: Contributions from the Black Radical Tradition, in Eds. Blewett, K. & Post, J. Reconceptualizing Response: Using Instructor Feedback to Promote Equity and Linguistic Justice in the Writing Classroom.

Courses Taught

WRT 1060: Composition II
WRT 3070: Podcasting
WRT 3084: Race, Social Justice, and Professional Writing
WRT 2070: Introduction to Writing for Digital Media