PhD, University of Texas at Austin
MFA, University of Iowa
About
Laura Wilder joined the faculty of the English Department in 2005. Her research and teaching interests are in rhetoric and composition, specifically writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing in the disciplines (WID), writing studies research methods, rhetoric and theories of invention, and the history of English Studies.
Her latest book, Tracing the Impact of First-Year Writing: Identity, Process, and Transfer at a Public University (Utah State UP, 2024), received the 2025 Best WAC Monograph award from the Association for Writing across the Curriculum and the WAC Clearinghouse. This book presents the results of Wilder’s longitudinal study of college students’ experiences with writing and explores the impact of a required first-year writing course with a rarely available comparative approach. Over five years Wilder conducted 143 interviews with, and collected 774 pages of their writing from, 58 students, half of whom had taken a new first-year writing course and half who had not. In addition to documenting the impact of a first-year writing course, Wilder documents how students’ experiences with writing can be highly divergent across the curriculum and unequal across campuses. This book also includes the voices of students who do not identify as capable writers and have strongly negative emotional reactions to writing and writing instruction. Wilder adds empirical support to innovative calls in the field to transform the first-year writing course into one that inspires students to reflectively consider writing itself. This research was supported by a 2014 CCCC Research Initiative Grant.
Wilder’s first book, Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies: Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines (SIUP 2012), examines the rhetorical practices of literary studies, from scholarly publication to introductory undergraduate coursework, using a combination of rhetorical analysis and ethnographic and experimental methodologies. In 2014, this book received the Research Impact Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Seeking to translate this research for application in classrooms, Wilder has co-written a textbook with Joanna Wolfe titled Digging into Literature: Strategies for Reading, Analysis, and Writing.
In 2015, Professor Wilder was awarded the University at Albany President's Award for Excellence in Teaching and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Journal Articles by Professor Wilder
“Borders Crossed: A Nationwide Survey on the Influence of Rhetorical Theory on Creative Writing.” Co-authored with Janelle Adsit (former UAlbany student). Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. 20.3 (2020): 401-429.
“Describing Cross-Disciplinary Analytic Moves in First-Year College Student Writing.” Co-authored with Robert Yagelski. Research in the Teaching of English. 52.4 (2018): 382-403.
“Tangled Roots.” College Composition and Communication 66.3 (2015): 501–506.
“Knowing What We Know about Writing in the Disciplines: A New Approach to Teaching for Transfer in FYC.” Co-authored with Joanna Wolfe and Barrie Olson. The WAC Journal 25 (2014): 42–77.
“Sharing the Tacit Rhetorical Knowledge of the Literary Scholar: The Effects of Making Disciplinary Conventions Explicit in Undergraduate Writing about Literature Courses.” Co-authored with Joanna Wolfe. Research in the Teaching of English 44.2 (2009): 170-209.
“‘Into the Laboratories of the University’: A Rhetorical Analysis of the First Publication of the Modern Language Association.” Rhetoric Review. 25.2 (2006): 162-184.
"'The Rhetoric of Literary Criticism' Revisited: Mistaken Critics, Complex Contexts, and Social Justice." Written Communication 22.1 (2005): 76-119.
“‘Get Comfortable with Uncertainty’: A Study of the Conventional Values of Literary Analysis in an Undergraduate Literature Course.” Written Communication 19.1 (2002): 175-221.
Recent Courses
ENG 110 Writing and Critical Inquiry in the Humanities
TENG 102z Honors Introduction to Creative Writing: The Progymnasmata, Rhetorical Exercises Used in Ancient Greece and Rome
ENG 205z Introduction to Writing in English Studies
ENG 355 Studies in Film: The Rhetoric and Ethics of Documentary Film and Reality TV
ENG 360y Tutoring and Writing
ENG 450y Topics in Writing Studies: “Expertise” in Reading and Writing
ENG 450y Topics in Writing Studies: Introduction to the Ancient Greek and Roman Roots of Rhetorical Theory
ENG 521 Composition Theory: Writing across the Curriculum
ENG 522 The History of Rhetoric
ENG 583 The History of English Studies
ENG 621 Research Methods in Rhetoric and Composition
ENG 621 Longitudinal Studies of College Writers
ENG 770 Teaching Writing and Literature