Christopher Sean Harris began teaching in the English Department at California State University, Los Angeles in August, 2009, and specializes in rhetoric and writing.
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One Sentence Biography
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Christopher Sean Harris is a professor of writing studies at California State University, Los Angeles who researches digital writing pedagogies, writing across the curriculum, project based learning, and the histories of rhetoric & writing instruction.
Brief Biography
He/They
Christopher Sean Harris began teaching in the English Department at California State University, Los Angeles in August, 2009, and specializes in rhetoric and writing.
As an undergraduate at South Dakota State University, Harris focused his elective studies in minority literature and earned a certificate in European Studies. During his master's degree studies, Harris concentrated on composition-rhetoric and American Literature of the 1800s, writing his thesis about Timothy Shay Arthur's Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and what I Saw There. As a graduate student at Bowling Green State University, Harris concentrated in the history of composition instruction, teaching with computers, and alternative rhetorics, writing his dissertation, First-Year Composition Handbooks: Buffering the Winds of Change, about the ways in which composition textbooks historically have both reflected and guided composition instruction, just as culture breathes life into genres.
Most recently, Harris was a co-editor of the December 2022 special issues of Computers and Composition and Computers and Composition Online, which focus on lessons learned from remote writing instruction during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Full Biography
He/They
Christopher Sean Harris began teaching in the English Department at California State University, Los Angeles in August, 2009, and specializes in rhetoric and writing.
A graduate of Bowling Green State University (PhD in Rhetoric and Writing) and South Dakota State University (BA, MA in English), Harris served four years in the United States Marine Corps ("Just passing time," as Lucas Jackson would say) before attending college. While attending college, Harris worked on the graveyard shift at two factories and a hotel, and he spent his summers building log houses for Twin Springs Log Homes in Hill City, SD. During his free time, Harris enjoys outings with his daughter, endurance sports, and upcycling.
As an undergraduate at South Dakota State University, Harris focused his elective studies in minority literature and earned a certificate in European Studies. During his master's degree studies, Harris concentrated on composition-rhetoric and American Literature of the 1800s, writing his thesis about Timothy Shay Arthur's Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and what I Saw There. As a graduate student at Bowling Green State University, Harris concentrated in the history of composition instruction, teaching with computers, and alternative rhetorics, writing his dissertation, First-Year Composition Handbooks: Buffering the Winds of Change, about the ways in which composition textbooks historically have both reflected and guided composition instruction, just as culture breathes life into genres.
Noteworthy publications include "First Steps with ePortfolios on a Technology-Hesitant Campus," which appeared in the In Computers and Composition Online special issue on Deploying 21st Century Writing on the Economic Frontlines, and “From the CMS Sepulcher, the Phoenix, Moodle Rises," which appeared in the in a Computers and Composition Online special issue on Open Source and Free Software.
Harris was a co-editor for the December 2022 special issues of Computers and Composition and Computers and Composition Online, which focus on lessons learned from remote writing instruction during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Currently, Harris is working on a longitudinal discourse analysis of artificial intelligence writing, a multimodal analysis of writing instruction of the 1800s, and an article about incorporating virtual reality in the writing classroom.
In the classroom, Harris challenges English majors to consider Zen classical elements of the production of books by both examining how histories of printing and book history have a Western focus that excludes Eastern, Muslim, and Central & South American printing histories. Key to understanding production, rather than consumption, of texts is exploring the parts of a book and bookmaking.
Harris currently teaches a range of courses, including English 5050: Visual Rhetoric, Electronic Literature and Digital Rhetoric; English 3050: Issues in Writing Pedagogy; English 5005: Language and Literacy; English 3100: Readings on the English Language; English 3030: Technical and Professional Writing; English 2030: Introduction to Technical Writing; English 5040: Theories of Composition and Rhetoric; EDAD 626: Writing the Doctoral Dissertation.
Content
Brief Curriculum Vitae
Engaging Assignments
I am ... and I Can ...
Letter Writing
Clay Tablets & "Woodblocks"
Bookmaking
MLA > APA Primer
Critical Inquiry
Critical Reading Responses
Annotated Bibliographies
Word Analysis with a Dictionary
Digital Writing
Multimodal Project Ideas
Understanding Technical Writing via Posters & Fliers
Rhetoric in the Real World
The Rhetoric of Love, and the Rhetoric of Violence
Real Historical Features of Rhetoric
Teaching Reflections
Learning Management Systems Ruin Online Workshops