Charles Woods, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor/English (MS/MA) Program Coordinator

A Conversation With Charles Woods

What would you tell a student who is thinking about attending A&M-Commerce?

Prospective students should know that A&M-Commerce is committed to cutting-edge research that benefits students in both urban and rural settings. For example, the Department of Literature and Languages has faculty with a variety of expertise working in different areas such as computational linguistics, digital rhetorics, surveillance studies and film and adaptation studies. I work with undergraduate and graduate students in classes like Professional Writing, Writing with Digital Media and Privacy and Surveillance Rhetorics to help them get ready to return to their hometown in East Texas, go to work in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, or make a difference in the world beyond Texas.

What draws you to your discipline?

My discipline is English, my field is rhetoric and composition and my specialization is digital rhetorics. I was drawn to my discipline as a child due to my love of reading and writing. I would read everything, and soon chapter books turned into novels, which in turn became movies, games, television shows, more novels, and, of course, technology and culture. As I grew older, I found ways to merge my interests in the Humanities with interests in technology and culture through my teaching and research. The world needs scholars who take Humanist approaches to interpreting and understanding the world, whether it is a piece of classic literature, an emerging technology, or the latest cultural phenomenon. So, I study data privacy and digital surveillance in my field of rhetoric and composition, which is very exciting considering developments in Artificial Intelligence.

What has been your favorite course to teach?

My favorite course to teach has been Writing with Digital Media. This course is a practicum on composing original essays with digital media, including video, sound and images. It is designed for advanced students and those new to writing with digital tools. It introduces students to a range of tools, concepts and models for composing with digital media, as well as ethical considerations associated with the creation and sharing of multimodal texts. In my class, students played around with different technologies to produce digital artifacts, including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Audition. We used two books throughout the term to guide us through soundwriting projects and, together, published the Becoming a Soundwriter Network. The Becoming a Soundwriter Network was a great way for students to demonstrate their technological capabilities and to meet course outcomes for writing with different digital media. It also created something public-facing for the community and allowed students to build their portfolio. Plus, the soundwriting projects were outstanding!

Tell us about a research project you are currently working on or recently completed.

I must tell you about my research on the Digital Rhetorical Privacy Collective (DRPC) Privacy Week! I articulated the DRPC in my dissertation, and once I began working as a professor, I organized an Advisory Board and founded the project. The DRPC is an interactive, coalitional resource that hosts events and features reading lists, activities, assignments, lesson plans and other teaching materials for teaching about data privacy and digital surveillance. The DRPC's mission is to bridge scholarly and public conversations about surveillance and privacy to enact coalitional action dedicated to not only to ending oppression under surveillance capitalism but also to building an equitable future for all. So far, the DRPC has won 3 research grants, including funding from the TAMUC Presidential GAR Initiative, the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC), and the National Council of Teachers of English/Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) to produce DRPC Privacy Week. Privacy Week was a week-long, interinstitutional event featuring scholars from 14 universities performing workshops, discussion panels and keynote lectures about privacy and surveillance. The DRPC was awarded the 2024 John Lovas Award and the 2024 Michelle Kendrick Outstanding Digital Production Scholarship Award for Privacy Week. You can watch Privacy Week events on our website. 

Educational Background

• Ph.D., English Studies, Illinois State University, 2021
• M.A., English, University of Montevallo, 2012
• B.A., English, University of Montevallo, 2010

Research Interests

• Privacy and Surveillance Studies
• Digital Rhetoric
• Technical Communication

Professional Organizations

• National Council of Teachers of English
• Rhetoric Society of America
• Conference on College Composition and Communication

Selected Publications

• Woods, C. (Winter 2024). “A Gesture of Defiance” From the Body: Toward Post-Surveillance Culture and the Privacy Aesthetic. Peitho, special issue on Talking Back Through Rhetorical Surveillance Studies: Intersectional Feminist and Queer Approaches, Gavin P. Johnson & Morgan Banville (Eds.).
• Woods, C., & Johnson, G. P. (2024). (Re)Designing Privacy Literacy in the Age of Generative AI. Communication Design Quarterly, special issue on Toward Digital Life: Embracing, Complicating, and Reconceptualizing Digital Literacy in Communication Design, D. Mollie Stambler, Saveena (Chakrika) Veeramoothoo & Katlynne Davis (Eds.). https://cdq.sigdoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Communication-Design-Quarterly-12.2.pdf
• Woods, C. & Wason, N. (2023). Making Well-Informed Decisions: Data Collection, Health Information, and Undergraduate Writing Instruction. In Michael Madson (Ed.), Writing About Health and Medicine: Undergraduate Courses, Programs, Extensions, Taylor & Francis, pp. 195-206.
• Woods, C. & Wilson, N. (2021). The Rhetorical Implications of Data Aggregation: Becoming a Dividual in a Data-Driven World, The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy, 19, https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-rhetorical-implications-of-data-aggregation-becoming-a-dividual-in-a-data-driven-world/.