Brian Hendrickson

Dr. Hendrickson’s scholarship and teaching focus on interrogating and transforming racist institutional structures; constructing culturally responsive, student-centered, interdisciplinary writing and learning pathways across and beyond the curriculum; designing innovative, engaging, community-driven digital humanities projects; and better understanding how these various agendas can help students cultivate equity-minded and rhetorically engaged learning dispositions.

In the rhetoric and writing courses Dr. Hendrickson has taught at RWU - including Community-Based Writing in a Digital World, How Writing Works, Rhetoric of Science, Technical Writing, Writing the City, Writing Science, and Writing for Social Change - students frequently undertake digital, collaborative, community engagement projects with a range of partnering organizations, which in the past have included the Audubon Society, HousingWorks, Nature Conservancy, Providence Police Department Community Relations Bureau, Save the Bay, and YouthBuild Preparatory Academy, to name a few. Most recently, Dr. Hendrickson led a grant from the City of Providence’s African American Ambassador Group, through which he and his students collaborated with the Providence Cultural Equity Initiative, Providence Public Library, and a range of community stakeholders to develop a framework for the reconciliation phase of the City’s truth-telling, reconciliation, and reparations process, as well as an interactive, educational, digital presentation of the findings of the truth-telling report (see truth.rwu.me).

Dr. Hendrickson cares deeply about mentoring students into community engagement and undergraduate research opportunities. His own scholarship has been published in journals including Across the Disciplines, Composition Forum, Composition Studies, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Mosaic, and WAC Journal, and he has work published or forthcoming in a number of edited collections, including Diverse Approaches to Teaching, Learning, and Writing Across the Curriculum: IWAC at 25, and Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2018. Dr. Hendrickson currently serves on the editorial board of the WAC Clearinghouse and as coeditor of a special issue of Across the Disciplines on STEM and Writing Across the Curriculum. Previously, Dr. Hendrickson has served on the board of WPA: Writing Program Administration, and as managing editor of the undergraduate and graduate scholarly journal Xchanges: An Interdisciplinary Technical Communication, Writing/Rhetoric, and Writing Across the Curriculum.

For his scholarship, teaching, and service, Dr. Hendrickson has been recognized by the Association of American Colleges and Universities with a K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award and by the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum with the Early Career Contributions to the Field Award. At RWU, Dr. Hendrickson has been awarded fellowships in Belongingness in STEM, Community Engagement, Diversity and Inclusion, and Engaged General Education, and has received a number of internal grants through RWU’s Foundation to Promote Scholarship and Teaching, through which he frequently funds student research positions. Dr. Hendrickson also currently serves as key research personnel on an NSF grant to promote student retention and persistence in STEM at RWU,

When he isn’t teaching, researching, or writing about rhetoric and writing, Dr. Hendrickson also writes poetry—which is still just writing about rhetoric and writing—as evidenced in literary magazines such as Indiana Review, New York Quarterly, and Smartish Pace, and in his book-length collection, Of Small Children / And Other Poor Swimmers. When he isn't doing anything rhetoric and writing related, Dr. Hendrickson is likely spending time with his family, as much in the water or mountains as possible.