Michelle LaFrance

Associate Professor

Writing and Rhetoric: Community-engaged research, community writing and community rhetoric, Public Humanities/public rhetoric and writing, creative nonfiction, writing across the curriculum/in the disciplines, ethnography, arts-based research

Michelle LaFrance (Ph.D., University of Washington, 2009) is a community-engaged ethnographer, who teaches courses on community writing, public rhetoric/rhetoric, methodologies, writing studies, and critical pedagogy. Michelle has published on institutional ethnography, the materialities of academic labor, e-portfolios, e-research, and writing center pedagogy. Her current work focuses on historic cemeteries in the Mid-Atlantic, including walking interviews and story circles at Historic Congressional Cemetery.

In 2021, Dr. LaFrance was awarded the College Composition and Communication Research Impact award for her book, Institutional Ethnography: A Theory of Practice for Writing Studies Researchers (USUP 2019). This book was also awarded "Honorable Mention" in the 2021 Best Book category from the International Writing Across the Curriculum Association.

Current Research

DC's Historic Congressional Cemetery, historic cemetery preservation, community writing and community Rhetoric, and writing studies research

Selected Publications

LaFrance, Michelle and Melissa Nicolas. Institutional Ethnography as Writing Studies Practice. (WAC Clearinghouse, Practice in Perspective Series, Under Contract 2023).

LaFrance, Michelle and Jay Hardee. “The Irreverent Rhetorician Vlogs It Out: A Case Study of Creative Play for Graduate Student Writers (in Experimental Form).” (JAELP: Journal for the Assembly of Expanded Perspectives on Learning, special issue on Creative Writing Pedagogies, Fall 2022.)

LaFrance, Michelle. “I Walk Among the Living and the Dead.” (for Journal of Multimodal Literacies, special issue on Care Work and COVID, Fall 2022)

LaFrance, Michelle, Beth Caravella, David Corwin, Sarah Johnson, Tom Polk, Robyn Russo, and Lacy Wooten. “Feminist Fingerprints and Composition Research: An Analysis of Research Trends from 2007 to 2016 in Four Top Tier Composition Journals.” (College Composition and Communication, June 2021).

LaFrance, Michelle. Institutional Ethnography: A Theory of Practice for Writing Studies Researchers. (2019.) Utah State University Press/University of Colorado.

LaFrance, Michelle and Wardle, Elizabeth. "The 21^st Century Feminist WPA," Journal of Writing Program Administration (June 2019).

LaFrance, Michelle and Alisa Russell. “Preparing Leaders Familiar with WAC-Contexts: Research Methods Course/Program Review as PhD Student Mentoring Opportunity.” WACJournal (Winter 2018/2019.)

Corbett, Steven J. and Michelle LaFrance. Peer Review and Peer Response: A Critical Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martins. (2017.)

Anicca Cox, Timothy R. Dougherty, Seth Kahn, Michelle LaFrance, and Amy Lynch-Biniek “The Indianapolis Resolution: Responding to 21st Century Exigencies/Political Economies of Composition Labor.” College Composition and Communication, Special Issue: Political Economies. 68.1 (2016): 38-67.

LaFrance, Michelle. “An Institutional Ethnography of Information Literacy: Critical Challenges for a First Year Writing Program.” Journal of Writing Program Administration. 39.2 (2016): 105-22.