ABSTRACT
Patricia Bizzell is currently professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. A nationally recognized authority in writing pedagogy and rhetorical theory, Bizzell is perhaps best known for her book The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, which she co-authored with Bruce Herzberg and which received the National Council of Teachers of English Outstanding Book Award in 1992. She earned her BA in English from Wellesley College and then her PhD in English from Rutgers in 1975. She served as the Assistant Director of Composition at Rutgers in a non-tenure-track position for three years before joining the faculty in the English department at Holy Cross in 1978. She created both the institution’s writing across the curriculum program and its peer tutoring workshop before she earned tenure a mere three years later (1981). Bizzell directed those programs from 1981 to 1994, going to full professor in 1988. She served as chair of the English department from 2001 to 2005 and as president of the Rhetoric Society of America from 2004 to 2006. Now a renowned scholar of rhetoric and writing with numerous publications and honors, Bizzell has chosen to remain at Holy Cross, where she has been teaching literature, writing, and rhetoric for more than 28 years.
