Victor Villanueva
Regents Professor & Director of the Writing Program
Victor Villanueva is Regents Professor and Edward R. Meyer
Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts at Washington State
University. He received his PhD in English with an emphasis in
Rhetoric and Writing from the University of Washington in 1986.
He came to Washington State University in 1995, where he has
served as Director of Composition, English Department Chair,
Associate Dean, and Director of American Studies. He is the
current Director of the Writing Program and is the editor of the
Studies in Writing and Rhetoric book series.
He has served as the head of the national organization for Rhetoric
and Writing Studies, the Conference on College Composition and
Communication, from 1997 to 2000. Over the years, he has received
a number of honors, including the Richard A. Meade Award for
Distinguished Research in English Education (1994), the David H.
Russell Award for Distinguished Research and Scholarship in English
(1995), Rhetorician of the Year (1999), the Advancement of People of
Color Leadership Award (2008), and the disciplines’ (rhetoric and
composition studies) Exemplar Award (2009).
At Washington State University, he has received numerous awards including the following:
● Martin Luther King Distinguished Service Award (1999)
● Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Research, Scholarship, and the Arts (2005)
● Mentor of the Year in American Studies (2009)
● Most Supportive Faculty Member (1998 and 2010)
● Best Graduate Seminar (2000, 2006, and 2010)
All of his efforts center on the connections between language and relations of power, especially racism.
Publications:
Villanueva is the author, editor, or co-editor of eight books and nearly fifty articles or chapters in books. Among
his books is the award-winning Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, Rhetorics of the Americas: 3114 BCE to
2013 CE, and Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, one of the most-adopted books for the training of English teachers of writing in the U.S. and abroad. He has also edited or co-edited two special editions of the journal College English.
His work is often anthologized, his writing having twice been chosen as The Common Reading at Buffalo State University.
Teaching:
Villanueva’s over thirty years of teaching have included fifteen different undergraduate course topics—from
teaching writing to underprepared first-year students, to the connections between literacy and politics, to the
rhetorics of racism. He has also taught over a dozen graduate courses—from methods of teaching writing to
the rhetorics of political economy. As well, he has served on well over a hundred graduate student MA and PhD committees, supervising seventy-five of those. His research interests are reflected in his scholarship; and his scholarship is reflected in his teaching and mentoring of future scholars.
Sources: Washington State University
