1. No category

M. Melissa Elston
800 University Drive
Maryville,
MO 64468
(432)
258-5109

[email protected]
EDUCATION
Ph.D.

Texas
A&M University, May 2014
College Station, Texas
Chair: M. Jimmie Killingsworth
Major: English
Concentration: Rhetoric and writing
Dissertation: “From Painting to Pixels: Expansionist Topoi in American Visual Culture”
M.A. University of Texas of the Permian Basin, May 2009. Odessa, Texas. Major: English.
B.A. West Texas A&M University, May 1997. Canyon, Texas. Major: Journalism.
Secondary Teaching Credential: Texas Educator Certificate, State Board for Educator Certification.
Areas: Special Education (Grades EC-12), Journalism (Grades 8-12), Generalist/All Subjects (Grades
EC-4), and Generalist/All Subjects (Grades 4-8). Valid through 9/30/2016.
ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
Assistant Professor/Writing Center Coordinator, Department of Literature and Modern Languages,
Northwest Missouri State University, 2014-Present. Duties include training and supervising a
staff of 11 graduate and undergraduate tutors, managing the University Writing Center budget, and
promoting center use across departments and communities on campus.
Graduate Assistant, English Department, Texas A&M University, 2009-2011, 2012-2014. In addition to
teaching, duties included serving as editorial assistant at the Journal of American Folklore and designing
an online version of a large-scale section of a literature survey course for non-majors. Also helped
develop A&M’s standard first-year composition syllabus, trained new graduate teaching assistants,
and revised departmental web presence while interning in the Writing Programs Office.
Graduate Assistant Director, University Writing Center, Texas A&M University, 2011-2012. Duties
included supervising, coaching, and evaluating tutors, as well as facilitating a weekly dissertationwriting group and providing one-on-one tutoring to struggling writers.
English Teacher (General Ed.), Ector County ISD, 2009.Taught English literature/composition to
eighth-graders in a district with a high ESL population. (Took position after an unanticipated midyear
vacancy at a nearby campus during the last portion of my M.A.)
Graduate Assistant/Translator, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, 2007-2008. Duties included
teaching freshman composition and assisting in a 3000-level literature and mythology course. Also
helped professor of Spanish transform a Spanish-language outline into an English-language article for
publication during the summer and fall semesters; transcribed and translated interviews.
Elston 2
High School Resource Teacher (Special Ed.), Ector County ISD, 2004-2008. Taught English
literature/composition to learning-disabled sophomores, juniors and seniors in a district with a high
ESL population. Also taught additional resource classes, including remedial reading and math.
PUBLICATIONS
Book Chapter:
“Allegorical Confrontation Meets Gaming System: Rhetoric and Trauma within Red Dead Redemption/Undead
Nightmare.” Undead in the West II: They Just Keep Coming. Eds. Cynthia Miller and Bow Van Riper.
Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow P, 2013. 142-58.
Refereed Articles:
“Repurposing Evangelical Patriotism: Revolutionary-Era Topoi and Native Legal (Re)Vision in Apess's Indian
Nullification.” Rhetoric Review. Forthcoming.
“‘A World Outside’: George Eliot’s Ekphrastic Third Sphere in The Mill on the Floss.” George Eliot-George Henry
Lewes Studies 62/63 (September 2012): 34-48.
“Subverting Visual Discourses of Gender and Geography: Kent Monkman's Revised Iconography of the
American West.” The Journal of American Culture 35.2 (June 2012): 181-90.
“Playing Hide and Seek with Venus and Madonna: Wilkie Collins’s Early Experiment in Pre-Raphaelite
Transgression.” Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature (formerly The Victorian Newsletter) 119
(Spring 2011): 49-66.
“Xerxes in Drag: Post-9/11 Marginalization and (Mis)Identification in 300.” disClosure: A Journal of Social
Theory 18 (2009): 58-74.
“A Suspended, Timeless Universe: The Narrative Caravaggism of Chevalier’s The Virgin Blue.” Atenea 29.1
(June 2009): 55-68.
Book Reviews:
With Christina V. Cedillo-Tootalian. Review of Rhetorics and Technologies: New Directions in Writing and
Communication. Ed. Stuart A. Selber.JAC: Rhetoric, Writing, Culture, Politics. Forthcoming.
Review of Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture, 1855-1875
by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra. Victorian Periodicals Review 45.4 (Winter 2012): 498-499.
Review of Illustrated Periodicals of the 1860s: Contexts and Collaborations, by Simon Cooke. Victorian Periodicals
Review 44.4 (Winter 2011): 402-4.
Under Review:
“Mental Disability and the Director’s Chair: Interrogating the Relationship between Positionality and
Pedagogy.” Target journal: Praxis: A Writing Center Journal (upcoming special issue on disability and
writing centers.)
Elston 3
Current Works in Progress:
“Digital Echoes of Terra Nullius: Empty Gamelands and the Epideictic Frontier.”
“Assessing the Effects of Student-Centered Goal Setting on Required Writing Center Visits,” with Robin
Gallaher and Nick Kirse. Research grant funding by the Midwest Writing Centers Association
(MWCA). Projected reporting date: January 2016.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Writing for the Online Age - ENGL 10-430 (NWMSU: Fall 2014, upcoming in Fall 2015)
Technical Writing - ENGL 301 (Texas A&M: Summer 2010, Spring 2014 [two sections])
Professional Portfolio Preparation (Senior Capstone) – ENGL 10-410 (NWMSU: Spring 2015)
Practicum in Teaching Writing Skills - ENGL 10-380 (NWMSU: Fall 2014)
The Rhetoric of Style - ENGL 355 (Texas A&M: Fall 2012, Spring 2013)
Introduction to Literature - ENGL 203 (Texas A&M: Spring 2011)
First-Year Composition Courses:
Composition I: Academic Literacies - ENGL 10-111 (NWMSU: Fall 2014 [two sections],
upcoming in Fall 2015 [two sections])
Composition II: Writing as Community Engagement - ENGL 10-112 (NWMSU: Spring 2015
[two sections])
Composition and Rhetoric - ENGL 104 (Texas A&M: Fall 2010, Fall 2013), ENGL 1301
(University of Texas of the Permian Basin: Fall 2008)
GRADUATE SUPERVISORY COMMITTEES
Chair, Nicholas Kirse, current M.A. student. Projected graduation: December 2016.
Chair, Kathleen Irwin, current M.A. student. Projected graduation: December 2015.
GRANTS, AWARDS, AND PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION
Midwest Writing Centers Association Research Grant, 2014-15. (External, ~$500.)
Principal investigator. Co-authored with Robin Gallaher and Nick Kirse.
Core Curriculum Technology Enhancement Grant, Texas A&M University, 2012-2013. (Internal, ~$68,000.)

Co-authored with Cecilia Hawkins.
Graduate Enhancement Merit Award, Department of English, Texas A&M University, Fall 2013.
Graduate Enhancement Merit Award, Department of English, Texas A&M University, Fall 2012.
Elston 4
Hamlin Hill Essay Prize for "Mythology, Monotheism and Medicine in William Acton's Prostitution,"
Department of English, Texas A&M University, 28 April 2011.
Graduate Enhancement Merit Award, Department of English, Texas A&M University, Fall 2011.
Graduate Student Conference Travel Grant, Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, Texas
A&M University, Fall 2010.
Regents Fellowship, Texas A&M University, 2009-2010.
Outstanding Graduate Student in English (2009), Department of Literature and Languages, University of
Texas of the Permian Basin, May 2009.
Michael K. Schoenecke Award for Best Graduate Paper on American Culture. Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting
of the Southwest/Texas Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association. 13-15 February
2008. Albuquerque, New Mexico.
SELECTED CONFERENCE PAPERS
“Centering in on Access: Disability and the Writing Center’s Role,” 2015 Southern Illinois University Writing
Center Conference, Facing the Future: Roles for Writing Centers on 21st Century Campuses,
Carbondale, Illinois. 10 April 2015
“My Name is Not Schuman: Negotiating Pedagogy, Power, and Persona in the Age of Slate Punditry via
Reconstitutive Discourse.” 65th Annual Convention of the Conference on College Composition and
Communication (CCCC). Tampa, Florida. 18-21 March 2015.
“Macro and Micro Management: Finding the ‘I’ in the A-hole” (discussion panelist). International Writing
Centers Association/National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing Joint Conference 2014. Lake
Buena Vista, Florida. 31 October 2014.
“Revisiting/Reimagining Histories of Empire: The Material Rhetoric of Steampunk and Neo-Victorian
Collectibles,” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States, 2014
Conference. Fullerton, California. 16-18 October 2014.
“Exploring the Relationship between Inventio and Methodology in the Undergraduate Classroom.” 16th
Biennial Rhetoric Society of America Conference. 22-26 May 2014. San Antonio, Texas.
“The Dying Gaul Dons Redface: Expansionism and Neoclassical Topoi in American Sculpture.” 16th Biennial
Rhetoric Society of America Conference. 22-26 May 2014. San Antonio, Texas.
“What’s in a Meme?: The Rhetoric of Digital Commonplacing.” 64th Annual Convention of the Conference
on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). 13-16 March 2013. Las Vegas, Nevada.
“Trauma Cinema Meets Gaming System: The Visual Rhetoric of Red Dead Redemption/Undead Nightmare.” 47th
Annual Conference of the Western Literature Association. 7-10 November 2012. Lubbock, Texas.
“Decolonizing the Writing Center.” International Writing Centers Association Conference 2012. 25-27
October 2012. San Diego, California.
Elston 5
“Red Dead Revisions: Using the Digital Western to Craft an Alternative Frontier Narrative.” 63rd Annual
Convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). 21-24 March
2012. St. Louis, Missouri.
“Creating Mischief – and Miss Chief: What Monkman’s Canvases Can Teach Us about Aesthetics, Rhetoric
and Survivance.” 2011 Joint Conference of the National Popular Culture and American Culture
Association (PCA/ACA) and the Southwest/Texas Pop Culture Association/American Culture
Association. 20-23 April 2011. San Antonio, Texas.
“Kent Monkman: Subverting European Visual Discourses of Gender and Geography.” 62nd Annual
Convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). 6-9 April
2011. Atlanta, Georgia.
“From Thermopylae to Ground Zero: Distorted Representations of the Other in 300.” Twenty-Ninth
International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, International Association for the Fantastic in
the Arts. 19-23 March 2008. Orlando, Florida.
“Xerxes in Drag: Post-9/11 Marginalization and (Mis)Identification in 300.” Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting
of the Southwest/Texas Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association. 13-15 February
2008. Albuquerque, New Mexico.
OTHER RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
Assistant Managing Editor, Odessa American, March 2003-August 2004. Supervised a 24-person
newsroom staff, coached reporters, directed integrated story/art planning meetings, designed pages,
wrote a weekly column, helped direct newspaper redesign project and plan Spanish-language
publication launch.
Assistant News Editor/Assistant Features Editor, Idaho Statesman, June 2000-March 2003. As ANE:
Supervised a 16-editor copy desk, participated in news budget meetings, designed news fronts, edited
copy, wrote headlines. As AFE: Coached reporters; directed integrated story/art planning meetings;
designed pages; edited, designed, and wrote copy for weekly standing features such as the Food,
Books, and Idaho History pages; edited and laid out weekly Entertainment Idaho section; recruited,
coached and managed five rotating freelancers as well as permanent staff of four.
Copy Desk Chief, Odessa American, January-June 2000. Supervised a 5-editor copy desk, edited copy,
wrote headlines, designed pages.
Copy Editor, Amarillo Globe-News, May 1997-January 2000. Edited news copy, wrote headlines,
designed three weekly feature sections (Life, Viva!, and Beliefs & Ethics), and edited and laid out
monthly business newsmagazine.
Editor/Reporter, The Prairie student newspaper, September 1995-May 1997.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AND ACTIVITIES
Professional Organizations, Journals, and Conferences:
Secretary, Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Queer Caucus. 2015Present.
Elston 6
Committee Member, Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) LGBTQ
Awards Selection Committee. 2014-15.
Manuscript Reviewer, Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. 2014-Present.
Board Member, VISAWUS (Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United
States), 2009-Present.
Webmaster, VISAWUS (Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United
States), 2009-12.
Campus-Level Service:
Member, Expository Writing Committee, Northwest Missouri State University, 2014-15.
Member, Graduate Program Committee, Northwest Missouri State University, 2014-15.
Representative, English Department Executive Committee, Texas A&M, 2013-14.
Co-President, English Graduate Students Association, Texas A&M, 2012-13.
Organizing Team Member, Atravesado speaker/workshop series, Texas A&M, 2012-13.
Representative, English Department Executive Committee, Texas A&M, 2011-12 .
Member, SACS Re-Accreditation Committee at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin
(UTPB), 2008-09.
Vice President, Sigma Tau Delta chapter at UTPB, 2008-09.
Co-Organizer, UTPB Recycling Project, 2007-09.
MEMBERSHIPS
Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)
International Writing Centers Association (IWCA)
Midwest Writing Centers Association (MWCA)
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
Rhetoric Society of America (RSA)
Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States (VISAWUS)
LANGUAGES
French (speaking and reading knowledge)
Spanish (reading knowledge)
REFERENCES
Available offline.