Harry Denny

Promoted to Professor
Department of English
hdenny@purdue.edu

Harry Denny, director of the Writing Lab at Purdue, loves to question and coach rhetoric to the students who seek help at the Writing Lab, including its famous Online Writing Lab (OWL).

Denny has a BA in American Studies from the University of Iowa, an MA in Sociology from the University of Colorado, and a PhD in Rhetoric and Communication from Temple University. He has studies media response to HIV/AIDS and what that says about society and HIV/AIDS politics. He also was inspired by a social activism campaign to focus on political rhetoric and social campaigns. He uses these experiences to challenge students and faculty to better writing and critical thinking.

Denny’s “Gender, Sexuality and the Cultural Politics of Men’s Identity in the New Millennium: Literacies of Masculinity” maps the connection between media, popular culture, and the pedagogy of reading and writing the performances of masculinity. This book follows “Out in the Center: Public Controversies, Private Struggles,” co-edited with Anna Sicari, Rob Mundy, Lila Naydan, and Richard Severe, which deepens conversations in writing centers about identity politics by foregrounding authentic voices and experiences of tutors and administrators navigating everyday sessions and the disclosure and embodiment of difference. Denny’s first monograph, “Facing the Center: Towards and Identity Politics of One-to-one Mentoring,” explores how sociocultural dynamics impact the everyday interaction of writing conferences.