People
Faculty
Michele Polak
Titles
- Visiting Instructor
Education
- A.B.D., Miami University
- M.A., Ohio University
- B.A., Cleveland State University
Teaching & Research Interests
- Composition Rhetoric
- Women’s Studies
- Focus on Girl Studies
Selected Publications
- “‘I think it was your cherry pies.’: Girl Identity and the Male Gaze in Girl-Objectified Cinema.” Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, forthcoming.
- “Going Mutlimodal: Programmatic, Curricular, and Classroom Change” in Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres in Student Compositions, forthcoming. Collaboratively authored.
- Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia, Vols. I and II. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007. Contributing author.
- “‘There are too many of us for this to be abnormal!!!’: Girls Creating Identity and Forming Community in Pro Ana/Mia Websites.” Digital Girls: Growing Up Online. Palgrave, MacMillan, 2007.
- “It’s a gURL Thing: Community vs. Commodity in Girl-Focused Netspace” in Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006.
- “From The Curse to The Rag: Online gURLs Rewrite the Menstruation Narrative” in Girlhood: Redefining the Limits. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2006.
Grants & Awards
- Third Annual Symposium on the Teaching of Writing, $200 grant, for “‘Why am I Obsessed With the Stupid Facebook?’: Building Social Structures in a Campus-Wide Online Community and Beyond”, Miami University Department of English, April 2005.
- Women Breaking Barriers Award, Miami University Women’s Center, March 2005.
- Next Generation Foundation Fellowship, £500 award, for “It’s a Gurl Thing: Community vs. Commodity in Girl-Focused Netspace.” Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, Institute of Education, University of London, England, July 2004.
- Conversations About Teaching/Investigating Teaching, Spring Symposium on Teaching Writing, $200 grant, for “‘Mattimeo84: lol, that is ironic’: One Student’s Exploration is One Teacher’s Find”, Miami University Department of English, April 2004.
Work in Progress
Michele is currently working on her dissertation entitled, “Beyond Digital Play: Introducing Girl-Created Subjectivity to the College Composition Classroom.”