J. W. Hammond

Biography

As an interdisciplinary scholar of rhetoric and composition, my research investigates the persuasive power of standards and norms, paying particular attention to the ways that judgments about writing and about writers relate to (in)equity. To date, this line of research has proceeded along three interrelated tracks, examining the ethics and effects of (i) techniques and technologies for assessing student writing, (ii) professional standards and guidance for evaluating research quality, and (iii) disciplinary norms for appraising equity and inclusion in STEM education. 

Currently, I'm working on a book project that remaps the early history of writing education in the United States through the coordinates of race, (dis)ability, and biopolitics, documenting how writing assessment technologies shaped and were shaped by eugenic rhetoric—and by resistance to it. Examples of my published scholarship can be found in College Composition and Communication, Review of Research in Education, Assessing Writing, the Journal of Writing Assessment, Ecology and Evolution, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, SAGE Open, and Scientific American.