Rhetoric and Writing (Ph.D.)

The PhD Program in Rhetoric and Writing at Virginia Tech focuses on rhetoric in society. We study language use and rhetorical activity in public, academic, corporate, and governmental settings in a collective effort to engage pressing social and cultural issues through academic discourse, public policy, and community outreach. 

• Virginia Tech’s Rhetoric and Writing doctoral program has distinguished faculty whose research attends to social problems, disciplinary questions, and the information demands of a cyberconnected world. Areas of strength include medical rhetoric, data visualization, human rights, human-computer interaction, user experience, and cultural and feminist rhetorics. 
• Virginia Tech is a top-notch research institution and the College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences where English is housed possesses a variety of opportunities available to students which enable students to excel. 

• Our small program enables students to get individualized attention with award-winning and research active faculty. 
• We engage in rhetoric and writing research that contributes to social progress, examines how literate practices create, circulate, and prioritize societal values and the public policies based on those values, and examines how rhetoric and writing empower and control access to power in these social systems.