Our graduate students come to us from four continents: Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Representing almost 15 countries (such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Sudan, Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Germany and Italy), our students create a diverse community of emerging scholars, committed to learning, collegiality, cultural exchange, world citizenship, civility, and social outreach.

We currently have 37 graduate students enrolled in our programs, 22 for the MA in English and 15 for the PhD in Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. While the majority of our students are financially supported through departmental teaching assistantships, two carry research assistantships outside of the department and one is funded through a dissertation fellowship. Five of our PhD students are self-funded and hold teaching, academic, or administrative appointments outside of the department or the university.

Biographical Sketch
Ahmed Aljaberi is a graduate teaching assistant and a third year PhD student in English Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture at North Dakota State University. He has two MA degrees, one in English linguistics from Iraq, and the second in English literature and culture from the University of Amsterdam. He has taught ENGL 120 for first year undergraduate college students. Currently he is teaching Upper Division ENGL 321 (Writing in the Technical Professions). His scholarly interests include Rhetoric and Composition, Linguistics, Postcolonial and Transnational Studies, Digital Rhetoric, and Cultural Studies.

Conferences, Presentations, and Publications
Aljaberi, Ahmed. “Othello’s Ruse in Defiance of Venetian Rules: Marriage, Transgression, and the Discourse of Otherness in Othello.” Red River Graduate Studies Conference (RRGSC), 2018.

Biographical Sketch
I am Jo C Andreassen, and have joined the NDSU English Department as a Doctoral Student. My early academic and professional career was focused on Theology and Psychology, but most recently I obtained an M.F.A. in Fiction from New Mexico State University with my primary work being in memory, trauma, and (from a craft perspective) multimodality and hypertextuality. Two of my current interests are the body as living memory and collegiate curricular design and transgressive pedagogical approaches.

Biographical Sketch
Hello, I’m Luc Chinwongs. I finished my MA coursework at NDSU in 2008 and then taught English in Japan. I then spent several years working in tech support and as a technical writer, before realizing that I missed academia. I entered the English PhD program in 2015 and am currently preparing for my comprehensive exams. My research interests include the representation of nationalistic propaganda in both Japanese and US pop culture.

Conferences, Presentations, and Publications
Chinwongs, Luc. "Beautiful Boy Soldiers: Karou Shintani's Area 88 and the Negotiation of Japanese Post War Masculinity." Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), 2017.

Biographical Sketch
Stephanie Lemmer is a first-year PhD student in the Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture program. Conducting her prior studies at St. Cloud State University, Stephanie earned an MA in English Studies, an MA in Rhetoric and Writing, and a BA in English. While she has taught one more than a handful of first-year composition classes, Stephanie has also immersed herself in writing center work and holds a Writing Center Administration certificate. 

Stephanie’s research is focused primarily in queer theory and critical ethnic studies, reflected in her masters’ theses, Spectacular Violence: The Affective Registers of Black Bodies’ Matter and On Twisted Sovereignty: White Queer as Master and Slave and Other Poststructural Perversions. She is additionally quite interested in infusing queer methodologies in the classroom.

Presently, Stephanie, her partner, and aged cat are holding it down in the Midwest’s other windy city.

Conferences, Presentations, and Publications
Lemmer, Stephanie. “Excellence is Welcome Here: On Meritocratic Tropes." Red  River Graduate Student Conference, 2017.

Lemmer, Stephanie. “What Does It Mean to Teach Writing?" Minnesota Writing and English Conference, St. Paul, MN, 2016.

Lemmer, Stephanie. “How are Our Bodies (Pre)Marked for Capacity or Debility Toward Life or Death?” Panel facilitator, Survive and Thrive Conference, St. Cloud, MN, 2015.