• Contact

• Personal Website
• Email Dr. Porter

• Office

• Carlisle Hall, 100B

Years of Service

• Associate Professor, (2008 - present)
• Assistant Professor, 2002 - 2008

Education

• PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002
• MA, Auburn University, 1997
• BA, Trenton State College, 1992

Current Research

In the short term, Dr. Porter is working on essays about so-called “nonacademic” writing and the role that a reconfigured version of the argumentum ad ignorantiam plays in scholarship. He is also pursuing three long-term projects: (1) A book entitled Ignorance and the (In)Dispensability of Knowledge: New Directions for Composition Studies, Critical Theory, and Rhetoric; (2) an anthology of essays entitled Meaning: Essential Readings across and beyond the Disciplines, 1838-present, which he would also like to supplement with a website of related resources; and a book, not yet titled, that will extend the theorization of meaning consequentialism that he developed in Meaning, Language, and Time.

Recent Publications

• Meaning, Language, and Time: Toward a Consequentialist Philosophy of Discourse. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2006. (Winner of the 2006 W. Ross Winterowd Award for “most outstanding book in composition theory.”)
• ""Is There in Truth No Composition?” JAC 26 (2006): 299-310.
• Composition and Rhetoric Studies and the ‘Neglected’ Question of Meaning: Toward a Consequentialist Philosophy of Discourse.” JAC 23 (2003): 725-764.
• Literature Reviews Re-Viewed: Toward a Consequentialist Account of Surveys, Surveyors, and the Surveyed.” JAC 23 (2003): 351-377.
• “A Pedagogy of Charity: Donald Davidson and the Student-Negotiated Composition Classroom.” College Composition and Communication 52 (2001): 574-611.  

Department/University Committees

• Graduate Studies Committee
• Tenure and Promotion Committee
• Research Committee

Recent Awards and Grants

• W. Ross Winterowd Award (2006) for Meaning, Language, and Time
• Faculty Development Leave (Spring, 2006)

Professional Memberships

• Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition
• Conference on College Composition and Communication
• Modern Language Association
• National Council of Teachers of English
• Rhetoric Review Association of America