Dr. David Beard

Photo of David Beard
Professional Title
Writing Studies BA Program Coordinator, Professor of Rhetoric

Graduate Faculty: English MA 
Graduate Faculty and Campus Contact: Program in Literacy and Rhetorical Studies
Graduate Faculty:  Master of Professional Studies

My research can be found on my Google Scholar page.  My University of Minnesota archive of scholarly and popular writings (newspaper columns and poems) can be found on the University of Minnesota's Digital Conservancy page.

Education

PhD, Rhetoric, University of Minnesota, 2002

Courses Taught

WRIT 1120: College Writing
WRIT 31xx: Advanced Writing
WRIT 2506: Theories of Writing Studies
WRIT 1506: Literacy, Technology and Society
WRIT 4100/5100: Grant Writing and Project Management
WRIT 4300/5300: Research Methods
WRIT 4200: Writing & Cultures

WRIT 8902:  Teaching College Writing

MLS 8001:  Introduction to Graduate Study & MLS 8502:  Seminar in International Perspectives

Publications

I engage research by listening -- listening to unusual communities (wrestling fans, comic book readers, steampunks), listening to the diverse communities of Minnesota, listening to the media environment, listening to my students.  Listening is my methodology;  sometimes, listening is the object of my study; and it is through listening, from a position of cultural humility, that I enter into conversations with others.  Come talk with me.  

I have published in journals like the International Journal of Listening, Archival Science, Philosophy and Rhetoric (where I won the Rohrer Award with my co-author, William Keith), Southern Journal of Communication, Nordlit, Composition Forum, Reference & User Services Quarterly, Linguistic Research, Humanities, Enculturation, College Composition and Communication, Media Ethics, and The Popular Culture Studies Journal, among other venues.  

I have placed essays in Clockwork Rhetoric: The Language and Style of Steampunk (Mississippi), in Sports Fans, Identity, and Socialization: Exploring the Fandemonium (Lexington), Iconic Sports Venues (Peter Lang), Political Landscapes of Donald Trump (Routledge), A Century of Communication Studies (Routledge), What We Are Becoming: Developments in Undergraduate Writing Majors (USUP), Engaging Audience: Writing in an Age of New Literacies (NCTE), Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum (Boynton/Cook), the SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Ecologies of Writing Programs: Program Profiles in Context (Parlor Press), God and Popular Culture (Praeger), Finding McLuhan: The Mind, the Man, the Message (University of Regina Press), and other collections.

With Richard Enos, I edited Advances in the History of Rhetoric (Parlor Press).  With Heather Graves, I edited The Rhetoric of Oil in the Twenty-First Century: Government, Corporate, and Activist Discourses (Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Communication).  

You can meet me though this interview on the Public Lands podcast.  You can see the products of listening to the Duluth community in the time of Covid here.  (This was a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.). On that site, you might learn something about your neighbors, too!