Dr. Makmillen continues her interest in how rhetorical genre theory and linguistic pragmatics can help us understand legal, paralegal, literary and academic genres—especially in settings involving the participation and frameworks of Indigenous and other minority peoples. Some of this work follows her dissertation research, and involves legal and literary texts. And some is inspired by her past involvement in teaching cohorts of Indigenous students, and her present teaching in an HBCU. In all cases she is interested in how the twenty-first century university operates as a site for students’ emerging expertise and identities.
