Education
PhD, Rhetoric and Composition: University of Utah
MA, English: University of Oregon
BS, English: Westminster College
Biography
At CMU, Tiffany Kinney, PhD, teaches rhetoric and composition courses which include: Professional and Technical Writing, English Composition, Science Writing, Composition Theory and Rhetorical History.
As part of her research trajectory, she engages in research that focuses on paying closer attention to marginalized rhetorics by examining local histories and how they challenge dominant structures and narratives. Another part of her research trajectory involves working with other stakeholders from across disciplines and institutions to conduct research on how best to teach writing in the sciences. More specifically, this research has taken the form of developing digital curriculum designed to help science writing students in learning to write for their discipline.
When she is not teaching or researching, she can be found hiking around the Colorado National Monument or the Grand Mesa with her partner and their two dogs, Willow and Indie.
Teaching Philosophy
No matter the class, Kinney designs the course material to teach students that discourse is not neutral in that it is inscribed with power relations that influence what is included, by whom, for which purpose and in which form. By making students aware of these dynamics, she finds that they develop communicative patterns that are more rhetorically sophisticated and inclusive.
More specifically, she wants her first-year students, to be trained as critical thinkers and capable writers, who have a developing facility with research methods. As part of their training, she helps them understand genre conventions for documents that are frequently required in an academic setting, such as: a summary, a rhetorical analysis and a research paper. While in her advanced courses, she teaches students to not only recognize genre conventions but to develop expertise modulating discursive content from one mode to another by applying rhetoric as a heuristic across the media spectrum: essays become speeches, speeches become poster presentations, poster presentations become podcasts, podcasts become digital exhibits.
Published Work
Articles
Kinney, Tiffany; Sumiko Martinez and Julie Snyder-Yuly. “Cultivating Graduate Writing Groups as Communities of Practice: A Toolkit.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 16.3. (2019): 16-24.
Kinney, Tiffany. “Cinch for Instacurves: Exploring the Discursive Assemblage of Waist Trainers in New Media,” The Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, 6.2 (2016): 1-18.
Book Chapters
Kinney, Tiffany. “Tracing the Conversation: 20th Century Mormon Feminist Thought.” Feminist Connections: Rhetorical Strategies from Suffragists to the Cyberfeminists, edited by Katie Fredlund, Kerri Hauman and Jessica Ouellette, University of Alabama Press, 2020, pp. 181-196.
Kinney, Tiffany; Rachel Bloom, Tasha Dubriwny, Robin Jensen, Megan McFarlane, Carrie Murawski and Jennifer Stockwell. “Reevaluating Our Commitments: Intersectionality, Interdisciplinarity and the Future of Feminist Rhetoric.” In Jenny Rice and Chelsea Graham’s Rhetorics Change. Forthcoming 2017. 24 manuscript pages.
Book Reviews
Kinney, Tiffany. In the Archives of Composition: Writing and Rhetoric in High Schools and Normal Schools, by Henrietta Rix Wood and Lori Ostergaard, Peitho: Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition, 19.2 (2017): 350 356.
Kinney, Tiffany. Women’s Irony: Rewriting Women’s Feminist Rhetorical Histories, by Tarez Samra Graban. Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric. 35.3 (2017). 368-370.