Recent Publications

"Laurie Simmons' Role Plays: Love, Sex, Desire" (interview) for spot (Fall 2012): 12-7

"More than a Comic Sidekick: Fat Men in Gay Porn" for Performing Ethos (2.2 [Fall 2012]: 109-20)

"'Beware! This is a Man!'" for Feminist Teacher (20:2 [2010]: 157-70)

"The (Missing) Faces of African-American Girls with AIDS" for Feminist Formations (22:1 [Spring 2010]: 1-20)

"When Heroes Fall: I Am My Own Wife and the Challenge to Truth" for Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, edited by Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson (Palgrave Macmillian; Hampshire, England, 2009: 167-78)

Teaching and Research Interests

Theories and Rhetorics of Gender and Sexuality

Memoir and Creative Nonfiction

Film, New Media, and Visual Rhetorics

Medical Humanities and Trauma Studies

Background

PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2003

MA in Comparative Studies from the Ohio State University in 1998

MA in Women's Studies from the Ohio State University in 1995

BA in English from the University of Houston with a minor in Women's Studies and membership in the University Honors College in 1993

Previous Employment as a Senior Lecturer in Ohio State's Writing Workshop and as a Writing Consultant, Writing-across-the-Curriculum Consultant, Outreach Consultant, and Outreach Team Coordinator in Ohio State's Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

"Yes, Clarissa thinks, it's time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhpas even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more."

--Michael Cunningham, The Hours

My Online Work

Facebook | Flickr | GetGlue | Tumblr | Twitter 

Teaching (Spring 2013)

Past Courses

FYS 100: First-Year Seminar on The Graphic Memoir | Fall 2012 | Course Blog

GS 202: Men and Masculinity | Fall 2012 | Course Blog

RPW/GS 251W: Rhetorics of Gender Activism | Fall 2012 | Course Blog

RPW 370W: Foundations of Rhetoric | Spring 2011 | Course Blog

RPW 390W: Medical Writing | Spring 2011 | Course Blog

RPW 110: Rhetoric and Writing I | Fall 2010 | Course Blog

RPW 215W: Introduction to Professional Writing | Fall 2010 | Course Blog

RPW 210: Foundations of Argument | Fall 2010 | Course Blog

GS 100: Introduction to Gender Studies | Spring 2010 | Course Blog

RPW/GS 340W: Writing in Gender-Based Activist Organizations | Spring 2010 | Course Blog

HON 389/390: The Humanities Center Seminar on Pain | Fall 2008/Spring 2009 | Course Blog

Contact Info

Nels P. Highberg, Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Rhetoric and Professional Writing
University of Hartford
200 Bloomfield Avenue
West Hartford, CT 06117

860-768-4136 (Voice)
860-768-4940 (Fax)
860-768-4743 (Department)

Email Nels