Biography

Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Patty Wilde was very excited to join the English Department at Washington State University in 2016. As a first-generation college student and advocate of access-oriented education, she is particularly proud to call the Tri-Cities campus home. Prior to WSU, she taught writing and research courses at community colleges for over a decade, fundamentally shaping her pedagogical approach and view of education as a basic human right. Her experiences at these institutions inspired her CCC article “Composing Addiction: A Study of the Emotional Dimensions of Writing Processes” and her interest in rhetorics of substance use disorders, research that has been generously supported by grants from WSU and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. But also concerned with the constitutive function of community memory, Patty studies how collective visions of the past are rhetorically constructed, reflecting and informing dominant values and priorities of the present. Employing feminist rhetorical theory to undertake this work, she has examined the formation, function, and circulation of memory in a wide range of contexts. Her forthcoming monograph, Winning Our Wonder: Rhetorical Re/Constructions of American Civil War Women on the Web, explores how women have been remembered in the context of the American Civil War, a nation-defining event that continues to influence social perceptions of gender, race, citizenship, and belonging. Patty currently serves as the Director of English Graduate Studies.

Education

• PhD, English, Composition Studies, 2015
  University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH
• MA, English, Literary Studies, 2003
  Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH
• BA, Literature, Creative Writing, and Mass Communications, 2000
  Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR

Research Interests

Feminist Rhetorics, Histories of Rhetoric and Composition, Memory Studies, Archival Research, Rhetorics of Substance Use Disorders, Access-Oriented Education, Dual Enrollment, Composition Theory and Pedagogy, and Collaborative Writing

Monograph

Winning Our Wonder: Rhetorical Re/Constructions of American Civil War Women on the Web. University of South Carolina Press. Forthcoming Nov. 2025.

Editorial Endeavors

• With Kathryn Manis and Bibhushana Poudyal, editors. “Emergency Archives: Investigating
  Rhetorical (Im)Possibility, Action, and the Impact of Precarious ‘Preservation’ Under Crisis.” Rhetoric Review Symposium. Forthcoming Jan. 2026.
• With Erin Costello Wecker and Justine Trinh, editors. “Academia in Crisis: How Feminist Rhetorical Scholars Respond.” Summer Special Issue of Peitho, 2026.
• With Kathryn Manis, Bibhushana Poudyal, and Ma-Ya, editors. This is an Emergency (Archive): Recording, Remembering, Resisting, Refusing Under Catastrophe. Proposed edited collection, in conversation with WAC Clearinghouse Across the Disciplines Series (CFP currently circulating).

Select Book Chapters and Journal Articles

• With Angela Mitchell, Lisa Johnson-Shull, Melanie Thongs, Brooklyn Walter, Robin Ebert Mays, Kate Watts, and Wendy Olson. “Navigating Critical AI Literacy across the State: WPA Approaches to AI throughout the Washington State University System.” Artificial Intelligence and Writing Program Administration: Sustainable Approaches to a Rapidly Changing Future, edited by Julie Christoph, George Cusack, and Kara Wittman. Collection under contract with Parlor Press.
• With Carolyn Calhoon-Dillahunt and Wendy Olson. “Revisiting English Graduate Education and the TYCA Position Statement for Preparing Teachers of English in the Two-Year College in a Post-Pandemic World: Reflections on Trauma-Informed Pedagogies.” Forthcoming in Preparing Writing Program and English Department Graduate Students for Successful Careers at Two-Year Colleges, edited by Erin Lehman and Joseph Janangelo.
• With Mitzi Ceballos and Wyn Andrews Richards. “Keeping Bad Company: ‘Listening’ to Aryan Nations in the Archives.” Community Listening: Stories, Hauntings, Possibilities edited by Jenn Fishman, Romeo García, and Lauren Rosenberg. WAC Clearinghouse, 2024, pp. 69-90.
• With Kathryn Manis. “Locating Yourself in the Historical Record: Failures of Provenance and Metadata Schemas in the Library of Congress’s Digital Materials.” Spec. issue of Archival Science, edited by Janette Bastian. Sept. 2024.
• “Composing Addiction: A Study of the Emotional Dimensions of Writing Processes.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 71, no. 1, 2022, pp. 164-186.
• With Kathryn Manis. “A Matter of Order: The Power of Provenance in the Mercury Collection of Marion Lamm.” Unsettling the Archive: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives. Edited by Gesa Kirsch, Romeo García, Caitlin Burns, and Walker Smith. Southern Illinois University Press, 2022, pp. pp. 67-79.
  This collection won a 2024 CCCC Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention.
• With Erin Wecker. “Neither Here Nor There: A Study of Dual Enrollment Students’ Hybrid Identities in First-Year Composition.” Spec. issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College, vol. 48, no. 1, 2020, pp. 16-43.
• “More Than Mere Display: Susie King Taylor’s My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops.” Reframing Nineteenth-Century American Activist Rhetorics. Edited by Patricia Bizzell and Lisa Zimmerelli. Modern Language Association, 2020, pp. 101-111.
• “(Re)telling the Times: The Tangled Memories of Confederate Spies Rose O’Neal Greenhow and Belle Boyd.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 38, no. 3, 2019, pp. 297-310.
• With Sarah Franco and Molly Tetreault. “Claiming an Education: Using Archival Research to Build a Community of Practice.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol.16, no. 3, 2019, pp. 1-12.

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