Welcome to my website

Currently, I am an assistant professor in the Department of Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth where I teach linguistics, advanced writing, and composition courses. Should you want to get in touch with me at any point, I can be best reached at my e-mail address, jspartz@d.umn.edu, or by stopping by my office, Humanities 437 on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

 

In August of 2008, I graduated from Purdue University with a PhD in English Language and Linguistics, with additional concentrated coursework in both Professional Writing and ESL. My dissertation, Do you want to come with?: A cross-dialectal, multi-field, variationist investigation of with as particle selected by motion verbs in the Minnesota Dialect of English, is an in-depth analysis of come with (and semantically-related constructions) in Minnesota. In carrying out this analysis, I employed methodologies from the historical, syntactic, and phonetic sub-fields of linguistics.


Recent Publications and Conference Presentations

Linguistics

tower of babel

Below, please find a list of recent publications and conference presentations related to my linguistics persona.

Publications:
Spartz, J. M. (submitted). Employing prosodic analysis to the constituency identification of come and go with in Minnesota: Extending cross-dialectal, variationist methodologies. American Speech.

Spartz, J. M. (2008). Can prosodic cues accurately identify constituent boundaries with cross-dialectal homophones?: With as a particle in the Minnesota English dialect. Emily Tummons and Stephanie Lux (eds.). Proceedings of the 2007 Mid-America Linguistics Conference, Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics (KWPL), Vol. 30, [329-342].

Spartz, J. M., & Cramer, J. (2009). A sign of the times: A glimpse at semiotics in the academy. In T. Prewitt and J. Deely (Eds.), Semiotics 2006: Proceeding of the 2006 Semiotic Society of America Annual Meeting. Ottawa: Legas Press.

Conference Presentations:
Spartz, J. M. (January, 2010). (Re)visiting the with of come with in the Upper Midwest Dialect: Towards an extension of cross-dialectal, variationist methodologies.  2010 American Dialect Society (ADS) Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland.

Spartz, J. M.(October, 2009). (Re)visiting the with of come with in the Upper Midwest Dialect: Towards an extension of cross-dialectal, variationist methodologies. Mid-America Linguistics Conference 2009 (MALC), Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri.

Spartz, J. M. (November, 2008). Cross-dialectal homophonous categorial demarcation using prosodic cues: With as a particle in the Minnesota English dialect. American Dialect Society session of the 50th Annual Midwest Modern Language Association (M/MLA) Convention, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Spartz, J. M. (October, 2007). Can prosodic cues accurately identify constituent boundaries with cross-dialectal homophones?: With as a particle in the Minnesota English dialect. Mid-America Linguistics Conference 2007 (MALC), Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas.

Writing Studies

writing utensils

Below, please find recent scholarship related to my life as a writing instructor and researcher.

Publications:
Spartz, J. M. (invited submission for special issues on disruptive technologies). Rhetorical savvy as social capital: Modeling entrepreneur identity construction within educational content management systems (working title). The Writing Instructor (TWI).

Conard-Salvo, T., & Spartz, J. M. (revise and resubmit). Listening to revise: Mainstream uses of text-to-speech software in the writing center. The Writing Center Journal (WCJ).

Spartz, J. M. (2007). Matched guise in the composition classroom: Assessing student attitude toward lexical selection. Proceedings of the 5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities, Honolulu, Hawaii: ISSN # 1541-5899.

Conference Presentations:
Weber, R. P., & Spartz, J. M. (March, 2010). Ethos, ethics, and entrepreneurship: Professional writing and rhetoric in a cross-disciplinary venture. Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW), Louisville, Kentucky.

Conard-Salvo, T., & Spartz, J. M. (April, 2008). Listening to revise: Mainstream uses of text-to-speech software in the writing center. Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), New Orleans, Louisiana.

 

Works in Progress

Linguistics

Spartz, J. M. (in preparation for American Speech). Employing prosodic analysis to the constituency identification of come and go with in Minnesota: Extending cross-dialectal, variationist methodologies.

Writing Studies

Spartz, J. M., & Weber, R. P. (in preparation for Journal of Entrepreneurship Education). Ethos, ethics, and entrepreneurship: Professional writing and rhetoric in a cross-disciplinary venture.

 

 

What's Happening


I am currently working on several projects in the world of writing studies.  The first, with Dr. Ryan Weber of Pennsylvania State University-Altoona, is related to the types of writing (and salient features of that writing) entrepreneurs use in the stages of business development, including financing, start-up, maintenance.  The second is a linguistic analysis of comments given during peer review sessions of undergraduate students in first-year and advanced writing classes, which compares "maual" peer reviews (pen and paper) to those facilitated through Moodle. 

Contact information

John M. Spartz, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Writing Studies
University of Minnesota Duluth
E-mail: jspartz@d.umn.edu