John Duffy
The William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Professor of Modern Communication
Faculty Faculty Fellow, Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights
Areas of study
- Writing and education
Education
Ph.D. in English, University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A. in Applied Linguistics , Teachers College, Columbia University
M.A. in Anglo-Irish Studies, University College, Dublin
B.A. in English, Boston College
Research and teaching interests
Ethics, Rhetoric, Public Speaking, Writing Pedagogy, The 1619 Project
Biography
John Duffy is The William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Professor of Modern Communication in the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame. He has published on the ethics of writing, the 1619 Project, the rhetoric of disability, and the historical development of literacy in cross-cultural contexts. In his recent book, Provocations of Virtue: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing, he examines the ethical dimensions of teaching writing in a post-truth world. John is co-editor of three volumes: After Plato: Ethics, Rhetoric and Writing Studies; Literacy, Economy, and Power: Writing and Research Ten Years After Literacy in American Lives; and Towards a Rhetoric of Everyday Life: New Directions in Research on Writing, Text, & Discourse. His monograph, Writing from These Roots, was awarded the 2009 Outstanding Book Award by the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and his book, Provocations of Virtue received honorable mention for the 2022 MLA Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize. He has published essays in CCC, College English, Rhetoric Review, JAC: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Politics, and elsewhere. John is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and received the 2022 Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor in the College of Arts & Letters. He teaches courses in rhetoric, writing, and literature, and serves as a Faculty Fellow in the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights and the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience.
Representative publications
- After Plato: Ethics, Rhetoric, and Writing Studies. Duffy, J. and L. Agnew (eds.). Utah State/University of Colorado Press, 2020.
- Provocations of Virtue: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2019.
- “The Good Writer: Virtue Ethics and the Teaching of Writing.” College English. (79.3): 229-250. January 2017.
- “Writing Involves Making Ethical Choices.” In Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies. L. Adler-Kassner, and E. Wardle (eds.). Logan: Utah State UP, 31-32. 2015.
- “Ethical Dispositions: A Discourse for Rhetoric and Composition.” JAC: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Politics. (34.1-2): 209-237. 2014.
