Amber Lee (’26 Dual MA in English/MFA in Creative Writing)

When Amber Lee (’26 Dual MA in English/MFA in Creative Writing) and Samantha Wilson (’25 MFA Creative Writing) submitted their proposal, “Motion Picture Rhetorics,” to the Conference on College Composition & Communication (CCCC), they didn’t expect their paper to be accepted. It was still in the first draft, and according to Lee, “we had a long way to go, and had no idea if academics in the field would be interested in the topic.”

“We’re not inventing anything new but pulling together ideas from a lot of different scholars into a strategy for teaching film, television, video games, music videos, animation, etc. in a rhetoric course,” said Lee. “Our goal for this teaching method is to use media that students are already engaged with to teach complex rhetorical concepts effectively, and for this understanding to transfer into improving their composition skills both in academic writing and digital compositions.”

The two began working together in fall 2025, as their final project for ENG: 582: Composition Pedagogy and Research Practicum taught by Professor Morgan Read-Davis (English). The class was meant to help them teach their first Eng 103 courses and show the two graduate students how to conduct IRB-approved composition pedagogy studies that they could submit to rhetoric and composition journals for publication.

Samantha Wilson (’25 MFA Creative Writing)

Lee’s themed course was Rhetorics of Asian Cinema, and Wilson’s course was Rhetoric of Television, so the two decided to team up and conduct a study on using television and film as the central texts of a rhetoric course.

“The initial impetus was the feeling of ‘Are we doing this right? Is it working? Are they learning?’ We gathered survey results from students and obtained permission to study their coursework, and saw what concepts they really used and what we could teach better next time. But as we learned more about the rhetoric field and the growing body of knowledge on multimodal pedagogy and learning transfer, the project turned into something much bigger,” said Lee.

The two will be traveling to Cleveland, March 4-7, 2026, to present their project. “This is our first composition pedagogy project, so we’ve been very excited and nervous while working on the paper and presentation,” said Lee.

Lee Becomes First Chapman Student to Win Scholars for the Dream Award at CCCC

In addition to presenting their work at the CCCC, Lee was one of ten first-time panelists (out of hundreds of panelists for the conference) awarded the Scholars for the Dream Travel Award by the CCCC. Lee is the first Chapman student to ever receive this award.

The awards are given to scholars in historically underrepresented groups. Lee is scheduled to accept the award on the first day of the conference and will receive a $1,000 award, as well as the opportunity to work with career mentors affiliated with the conference.

“It’s a very encouraging start at entering this field. I’ve really enjoyed teaching ENG 103, and I’ve really enjoyed learning about the field of rhetoric and composition and all the cool research that scholars are doing right now,” said Lee.

After they graduate, they would like to teach more courses and conduct more studies on critical literacy.

“Teaching about films has already brought such interesting learning moments for my students and expanded their view on writing and analyzing. Sam and I keep joking that maybe one day we can make Motion Picture Rhetorics into a textbook so other people can teach their courses this way, teaching students that they already have skills in analyzing and composing and then shaping that into a rhetorical understanding that helps them think and create in any circumstance,” said Lee.