Faculty

Joel Nathan Rosen (Associate Professor of Sociology) is Program Director in Communications and Media Studies at Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His research is premised on the relationship between human activity and human efficacy as portrayed in media and as demonstrated through such cultural idioms as sport, music, comedy, and other areas that intersect celebrity. He is the author of The Erosion of the American Sporting Ethos: Shifting Attitudes toward Competition (McFarland) and From New Lanark to Mound Bayou: Owenism in the Mississippi Delta (Carolina Academic Press), is coeditor of and a contributor to a multi-volume series that explores the relationship between sport and celebrity (University Press of Mississippi), and has been published in such varied journals and anthologies as The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2009-2010, The Sociology of Sport Journal, The Journal of Mundane Behavior, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The Journal of Sport History, and Media History Monographs.

Dr. Wetcher-Hendricks received her B.A. from Glassboro State College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Lehigh University. Her main areas of interest are social research, statistical methods, interpersonal and mass communication, and gender relations. Courses that Dr. Wetcher-Hendricks regularly teaches include Basic Research Methods, Advanced Research Methods, Sociology of Gender, and Media Technology and Society. Her areas of interest are:  social research and statistical methods, including mathematical modeling, interpersonal and mass communication. She has written a textbook entitled Analyzing Quantitative Data: An Introduction for Social Researchers. She has been listed in various editions of Marquis Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who Among American Women, and Who’s Who in the World since 2008.

Dr. Fodrey specializes in rhetoric and writing studies.  Her research is grounded in her dedication to well-theorized and effective teaching and administrative practices in writing courses across the curriculum. Her recent published articles include “Voice, Transformed: The Potentialities of Style Pedagogy in the Teaching of Creative Nonfiction” in The Centrality of Style and “Thrown into Theory, or How I Learned to Love Spatial Rhetoric” in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. Her forthcoming co-written article “Digital [Re]Visions: Turning Pedagogical Strategies into Dynamic Classroom Tactics” will be featured in Kairos Praxis Wiki. Her current projects focus on the teaching and assessment of creative writing, the creative nonfiction genre as a form of social-expressivist discourse, and the potentialities of spatial immersion invention practices in the teaching of writing across the curriculum.

Dr. Fodrey has given talks on creative nonfiction pedagogy, writing teacher training, and the rhetorical functionality of social-expressivist discourse at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference, the Rhetoric Society of America Conference, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference. She is also an active member of each of the aforementioned professional organizations.

Regarding her approach to teaching, Dr. Fodrey writes, “Whether I am teaching academic writing, technical writing, or a creative nonfiction course, fostering the development of facilitas—Quintilian’s term for the ability to communicate effectively and ethically in any form, in any situation—remains the primary tenet of my teaching. I believe that compositions spanning the spectrum from literary to lab report, from primarily alphabetic to multimodal, can be taught, practiced, understood, and improved. All students are capable and need not wait for inspiration from muses in order to have valid ideas and produce writing of value to both themselves and others. With an understanding of how to analyze, enact, and occasionally disrupt conventions of audience, purpose, and genre in particular, students can best work toward becoming autonomous writers with the agency to communicate effectively in myriad forms and effect positive changes in the communities for which they write. What does my approach say about me as a teacher? It says I understand that a good rhetorician should be able to navigate multiple roles and discursive situations within a single day all while remaining true to her convictions and ethical in her presentation. It says I value my students’ experiences. I value their cultures. I value their differences. I value their understandings of what successful compositions look like and do in the world. And I believe in their abilities to rise to writing challenges that extend past the classroom and into the various communities and publics that comprise their realities. My students are writers first, and I—a fellow writer—am their guide through the vast and ever-changing landscape of composition.”

Hilde Binford received her BA in history and Master of Music in music history from Rice University. She then went to Stanford University, where she earned a PhD in musicology. Her dissertation was on Aquitanian introit tropes. Since then, her research has expanded to the music of the Old Order Amish. In the summer of 2005, she was the co-director of the first NEH Institute for Schoolteachers on "Bach Across the Centuries." She continues to present papers at national and international conferences, develop new interdisciplinary courses, and coordinate the biennial conference on Moravian music. When she has time, she plays the fiddle in a contra-dance band and viol da gamba.

In her personal life, Dr. Binford spends her free time traveling with her two sons, Trent and Alex. Together, they have camped in the wetlands of Brazil, stayed in yurts and wigwams in the Canadian wilderness (during winter!), and volunteered in a poor Guatemalan community. She continues to take courses herself -- most recently in math, photography and magic.