MARTINE COURANT RIFE, JD, PhD, Writing Professor, Lansing Community College, Michigan. Martine holds a law degree from the University of Denver, and is admitted to practice law in Colorado and Michigan, with an active license in Michigan. Rife received her Master’s degree in Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing in 2005 and her PhD in Rhetoric & Writing with a concentration in intellectual property and technical communication at Michigan State University in 2008. She is a professor of writing in the Communication Department at Lansing Community College in Lansing, Michigan where she’s been teaching online, face-to-face, and hybrid freshman composition, argumentation, technical and business writing, and advanced writing for over ten years. Rife has also taught at Michigan State University. Her research is at the intersection of intellectual property law and rhetorical invention. Rife is the 2007 recipient of the Frank R. Smith Outstanding Journal Article Award from the Society for Technical Communication.

Her professional activities include serving as elected Chair, 2010-2011 CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) Nominating Committee and Junior Chair, CCCC Intellectual Property (IP) Caucus. Rife also serves on the CCCC-IP Committee and is editor-in-chief of the NCTE-CCCC Caucus/Committee Newsletter. Rife is a leader in the field and activist with regard to intellectual property issues in educational contexts. In 2009, Rife took her research and successfully testified in Washington D.C. at the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Rulemaking Hearings, Library of Congress. She, along with other educational stakeholders, successfully requested an exemption to the anti-circumvention prohibition of the DMCA so that college teachers can now legally take small portions of movies from CSS encrypted DVDs. Rife also co-authored and organized CCCC’s public comment submission to U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Officer regarding The 2010 Joint Strategic Plan. Martine is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English, Michigan Educational Association, State Bar of Michigan, and Supreme Court State of Colorado.

Rife’s work has recently appeared in Technical Communication, Computers and Composition, Kairos, Teaching English in the Two Year College, Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, IEEE-Transactions on Professional Communication, and E-Learning and Digital Media. Rife co-edited two special issues on intellectual property/copyright/law: Technical Communication (with St. Amant) and Computers and Composition (with Westbrook, Logie, and DeVoss). Martine also co-edited two forthcoming edited collections: Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom (with DeVoss and Slattery) and Legal Issues in Global Contexts (with St. Amant).

Martine has presented her work at numerous conferences in law, technical communication, and rhetoric and composition. As a researcher in technical communication, Rife has been referred to as a “scholar of distinction,” and is a leader in the field with respect to legal aspects of technical writing especially in digital environments.