Jacob D. Richter

Curriculum Vitae

Welcome! I’m Jacob D. Richter, and I’m a researcher and educator specializing in rhetoric, composition, pedagogy, and digital communication. I’m a Teaching Assistant Professor of Writing at the George Washington University in Washington DC. Formerly, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and I’m a graduate of the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design (RCID) program at Clemson University, where I served as the Assistant Director of First Year Composition. My dissertation traces the efficacy of social media in rhetoric and composition pedagogies and is titled “Inventing Network Composition: Mobilizing Rhetorical Invention and Social Media for Digital Pedagogy.” I’m also hard at work on a book manuscript that connects digital rhetoric, nonviolent resistance, and social advocacy that is preliminarily titled “Networked People Power: Digital Rhetoric and Nonviolent Resistance in Social Media Writing.”

A few things to know about me: I’m an enthusiastic Researcher, a dedicated Teacher, and a committed Leader and Administrator in higher education.

My published Research has appeared in seven prestigious peer-reviewed journals in rhetoric and composition. Most recently, my article “Participatory Counternarratives: Geocomposition, Public Memory, and the Sounding of Hybrid Space/Place” has been published in College Composition and Communication (CCC). This article showcases a GIS audio tour mapping project in First Year Composition that helps students to produce social justice counternarratives of place, race, gender, and local history. I also have an article that theorizes how rhetorical invention occurs in social media environments titled “Network-Emergent Rhetorical Invention” that has been published in Computers & Composition. Additionally, my article “Writing With Reddiquette: Network Agonism and Structured Deliberation in Networked Communities” appeared in Computers & Composition. With Jordan Frith, I’ve published “Building Participatory Counternarratives: Pedagogical Interventions in Digital Placemaking” in Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies. Additionally, I’ve published “The Infosphere Probe: An Annotated Bibliography for a Post-Truth Age” in Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments, “Cameraphone Composition: Documentary Filmmaking as Civic-Rhetorical Action in First Year Composition” in Xchanges: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Technical Communication, Rhetoric, and Writing Across the Curriculum, and “Inventing Networked Electracies” in the journal Textshop Experiments. My article “Nurturing Distributed Expertise with Social Media in First Year Composition Pedagogy,” which details some of the findings from my dissertation’s IRB-approved qualitative study, has also been published in Composition Forum. I’ve also published book reviews in prestigious publications such as The Quarterly Journal of Speech, Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric, and in The Journal of Business and Technical Communication. In addition to published research, I’ve presented at nearly all of my discipline’s most prestigious conferences, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) conference, the Computers & Writing conference, the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) conference, and the Northeast Modern Language Association conference. You can read more about my research on this site’s Research tab or in my Research Statement.

I regularly Teach upper and lower division courses in Technical Communication (see my Spring 2023, Summer 2022, Summer 2021, and Summer 2019 syllabi), in Business Communication (see my Summer 2020 syllabus), and in First Year Composition (see my Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2020, or Fall 2019 syllabi). I also teach courses on Social Media writing (Summer 2023) and on Communication & Culture (Spring 2023). Before coming to Clemson, I was a Writing Instructor at SUNY Cortland in upstate New York, where I taught themed courses in First Year Composition, as well as an Instructor of Basic Writing at Onondaga Community College. My pedagogy values inclusivity, equity, active learning, and the elevation of marginalized voices. I pursue my teaching as research, and my research in my teaching. You can learn more about my pedagogy on this site’s Teaching tab. You can also view my Course Teacher Evaluations, sample syllabi, teaching awards and honors, and other pertinent materials in my Teaching and Administrative Dossier.

I’m also dedicated to Service, administration, and leadership in higher education. In the 2020-2021 academic year, I served as Clemson University’s Assistant Director of First Year Composition. In this role, I assisted first-time graduate writing instructors with their teaching responsibilities. Additionally, I helped to redesign the Composition programs curriculum, created video content for the program’s YouTube channel, and compiled resources and lesson plans for program-wide distribution (see the Administrative Experience section of my Teaching and Administrative Dossier). I also enjoy serving on Clemson’s Advanced Writing Committee as well as its First Year Composition Committee. At my PhD program’s chapter of the Rhetoric Society of America, I’ve served in various roles such as President, Professional Development Coordinator, Archivist, and Graduate Student Government Senator. In fact, during my year as our RSA chapter’s President, our organization won RSA’s “Outstanding Graduate Student Chapter” award (2020-2021 AY). Additionally, my Service work stretches beyond Clemson and into the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition. I serve as the Assistant Communications Editor for Xchanges: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Technical Communication, Rhetoric, and Writing Across the Curriculum. I also help to create educational YouTube videos on the discipline of Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) on behalf of more than ten TPC academic journals and book series. I’ve helped organize professional conferences such as the Carolina Rhetorics Conference, have reviewed manuscripts for publishers such as Writing Spaces, Parlor Press, and The Best of the Independent Journals in Rhetoric and Composition, and I’ve served on the Digital Presence Committee for WPA-GO. I was a HASTAC Scholar for the 2018-2020 term, and am currently a Bedford/St. Martin’s New Scholar. You can read more about my Service and Administrative work on this site’s Service tab.