Kate Mangelsdorf
My main focus in Rhetoric and Writing Studies has been on educational equity, and as a result my work has examined the ways that people maneuver within social and educational contexts to gain authority and voice. In the last few years I have concentrated on the reworking of English within the field of Rhetoric and Composition: the contradictions between dominant monolingual language ideologies and lived languages, particularly those on the borderlands. My research has been oriented toward students, and I have focused on topics such as peer review interactions between monolingual and multilingual students, students’ codemeshing, and the impact of assigning labels to non-traditional students.
In my view, changes in the field of Rhetoric and Writing Studies happen on the ground, in classrooms and communities, so in addition to publishing traditional scholarship I have focused on co-authoring textbooks that I believe have helped to push the field forward. Evelyn Posey and I have co-authored a high-level Basic Writing textbook, Choices, that soon will be released in its 6th edition by Bedford/St. Martins. We have also published a first-year composition textbook with Pearson, The World of Writing, which is the first of its kind because it is based on the idea that all students are multilingual.
I have been fortunate enough to teach a variety of courses throughout my career, and my most recent new course is one of my favorites. With Dr. Char Ullman, I am teaching a graduate class in which students conduct ethnographic research in first-year writing classes, focusing in particular on identity formation, language ideologies, and texts. I’ve also had the opportunity to work as an administrator at UTEP, and currently am directing two programs: English Education and Rhetoric and Writing Studies (which includes our Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition). I have served on the Executive Committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and have been the principle investigator of a $400,000 writing program grant from the Sid Richardson Foundation. In 2012 I won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the College of Liberal Arts.
When not hard at work, I can be found hiking the trails of West Texas and southern New Mexico with my husband and our very energetic dog.
For more information about my work, see my portfolio at http://works.bepress.com/kate_mangelsdorf/
UTEP Faculty Profile: http://academics.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=70104&ID=kmangels
Contact Information
Email: kmangels@utep.edu
Phone: 915-747-5543
Hudspeth Hall 315
Personal Information
Ph.D., University of Arizona
Professor