Frank Farmer
- Professor Emeritus
Contact Info
Personal Links
Biography —
Frank Farmer is a professor of English at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Saying and Silence: Listening to Composition with Bakhtin (Utah State, 2001) and editor of Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing (Routledge, 1998). His most recent book, After the Public Turn: Composition, Counterpublics, and the Citizen Bricoleur (Utah State, 2013), explores the relationship of counterpublics to emergent forms of democratic citizenship, and how this relationship bears upon the teaching of writing. He received his PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Louisville, and has published in several of the leading journals in the field, including College Composition and Communication, College English, JAC, Rhetoric Review, Written Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly and others. He has received a number of awards for his teaching, and most recently has served as chair of the Modern Language Association's Division Executive Committee on Language and Society. He currently directs the First and Second Year English Program.
Research —
Rhetorical, Cultural, and Public Sphere theories; Bakhtin studies; Style; Pedagogy; and Visual Rhetoric.
Selected Publications —
Books
Saying and Silence: Listening to Composition with Bakhtin. Logan: Utah State University P, 2001.
Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing. Editor and Introduction. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum P, 1998. [Edited Collection].
After the Public Turn: Composition and Counterpublics. [Manuscript in progress].
Selected Articles, Chapters, Review Essays
“A Repertoire of Discernments: Hearing the Unsaid in Oral History Narrative," in Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts. [with Margaret Strain]. Eds. Cheryl Glenn and Krista Ratcliffe, Southern Illinois UP, 2011. 231-249.
“Composition Studies as Liminal Counterpublic.” JAC: Rhetoric, Writing, Culture, Politics28 (2008): 620-34.
“On Style and Other Unremarkable Things.” Written Communication 22 (July 2005): 339-347 and “Response to Halasek and Williams.” Written Communication 22 (July 2005): 364-367.
“Tomorrow, Bakhtin: (Excerpt from a Tutor’s Diary.)” Writing from the Center. CD-ROM. Jo Ann Griffin, Mattingly C., and Eodice M., eds. IWCA Press. 2007. 26-34.
“Imagining a New Chautauqua: Service Learning and the Prospects for Community.” Kansas English 89(Spring 2004): 75-80.
“Dialogue and Critique: Bakhtin and the Cultural Studies Writing Classroom.” College Composition and Communication 49.2 (May 1998): 27-49.
"Voice Reprised: Three Etudes for a Dialogic Understanding." Rhetoric Review 13(Spring 1995): 304-20.
"'Not Theory . . . But a Sense of Theory': The Superaddressee and the Contexts of Eden.”Symploke 2 (Winter 1994): 87-101.
Awards & Honors —
Elected member, MLA Division Executive Committee on Language and Society (2011-2014)
2011-2012 Keeler Intra-University Professorship (2011)
CCC Braddock Award Selection Committee (2010)
Haines Faculty Research Fellowship (2010)
Editorial Board, The Journal of Scholarship in Higher Education (2010- present)
Conger-Gable Teaching Professor (2007-2010)
Mabel Fry Teaching Award (2003)