Michael Sutcliffe

I am a quiet and shy recluse (cough) that loves tattoos and piercings, bad words and brussel sprouts. I've been a skydiver and pilot, a climber and hiker, and I am now learning to ice skate and sew, but most importantly, I am an advocate and a activist.

Courses

Research

I am interested in the ways that language interacts with power and privilege in situations where power has traditionally been reserved for heterosexual white men. Most recently, I have been studying prison writing programs' attempts to extend privilege to disenfranchised, marginalized populations, and I intend my work to help interrupt the heteronormative racism of the prison industrial complex. I am also interested in the ways that feminist & sex positive pornography resists the (re)inscription of homo & transphobias. I have previously done work with writing assessment parallels in gang graffiti; writing program assessment as critical, public pedagogy; and on training instructors to work with multilingual writers and non-traditional students.

• Prison Studies & Abolitionist Rhetorics
• Pornography & Sex Positivism
• Queer Theories, (Trans)gender Theories
• Marxism & Political Economies
• Critical, Feminist, and Queer Pedagogies
• Writing Assessment
• TESOL

Education

• AA, Las Positas College (Liberal Arts/Administration of Justice)
• BA, California State University Sacramento (Rhetoric/Linguistics)
• MA, Sacramento State University (Rhetoric/Tesol)
• PhD (in progress), Washington State University (Rhetoric & Composition)