My research can be loosely grouped into three categories: research on teaching writing (or composition pedagogy, to my fellow writing teachers), reasearch on new media/cyber/techno/digital- culture, and research on identity studies--but identity often overlaps the other two. All of these are carried out in ways that also put me into a comparative media category. My work in composition includes my dissertation, numerous conference presentations, and a few publications. I've been working in this area since 1996--the first year I ever attended CCCC! My work in identity studies started around 2000 and I've done numerous presentations and articles in that; it's a very new field and I enjoy being a pioneer. Since it is so new, I've posted my own ideas about identity studies. The work in whatever you want to call new media these days (it's not so new anymore, is it?), has been going on for a long time, but I've only recently made it a central focus in terms of conferences and publication. Most recently I gave a talk at the New Network Theory Conference in Amsterdam, about online communities of comic book fans. It builds on my Sequential Tart research (see below). You can see an html version of the slides here. And a pdf of the paper (in draft form) is here. --This pdf is the whole conference reader; my paper starts on p146.
Most recently I've been working with faculty in several departments to create a center studying... well, the title is still being developed but I think we may decide not to call it "digital" or "techno" or "cyber" whatever and instead just call it Culture, Rhetoric, and Design. Or something like that. Right now we have a group of classes with more in development, and we are applying for a slew of grants. If that then leads to a corresponding slew of money, then next year there should be a new link to visit, where you can read all about the classes, colloquia, and projects.
My work in composition pedagogy has mainly focused on Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence theory, multicultural literacies, and non-western rhetoric. You might like to look at my dissertation abstract, the introduction, or my Radical Utopian Afterwards. Looking at my past work, you might enjoy a paper that considers the Utilitarian roots of western discourse conventions, and compares that most valued quality, clarity, in it's American and Chinese manifestations. Basically, I argue that clarity depends on meeting reader expectations rather than on any particular formal quality, and that no particular flavor is innately superior. While you can see the issue of identity in these pieces, I tackle it head on in other work.
I'm particularly interested in the way people construct personal identity in online communities and have studied how several of these groups empower their members by supporting creation of new, more positive identities than those allowed in mainstream culture. I've made several conference presentations about online communities empowering women and about constructing Asian and other ethnic identities; one, written as a sort of auto-ethnography about Sequential Tart, the online magazine for which I write and its attendant virtual community. The original version of the paper is available at the Media in Transition conference website through MIT program in Comparative Media Studies.