Biography
My research and teaching interests include rhetorical theory, composition pedagogy, professional communication, continental philosophy, digital rhetoric, and the rhetoric of science. My scholarship takes a rhetorical-theoretical approach to the study of writing practices, academic institutional dynamics, and knowledge production across disciplines. My most recent publication, “Marx’s Last Words: A Politics of Impurity,” which one can find in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, investigates the fraught legacy of Marxism in rhetorical studies and the politics of scholarly intervention. An earlier article, “Post-Policy,” published in College Composition and Communication, examines the structure of the policy claim in rhetoric and composition scholarship and its complicity in institutional ideology.
I also have several manuscripts completed and under review: an essay on the relationship between anxiety and writing, an essay analyzing contemporary rhetorical ontologies and posthumanist rhetorics, and an essay developing what I call a “quantum rhetorical theory,” which draws on the transition from classical to quantum physics to derive methodological lessons for rhetorical theory.
I teach courses in autotheory and experimental academic writing, rhetorical theory, professional writing and communication, and college writing. My teaching aims to empower students to interpret and produce complex texts with nuance and curiosity. Developing this capacity for intellectual exchange is central to my broader goal of equipping students with the skills and confidence in writing and communication that will support them across their coursework and beyond their college lives. To that end, I ask students to approach their writing as public-facing, with the possibility of publication in mind, even in introductory classes.
I also teach hybrid and multimodal approaches to academic and professional writing, in which students might, for instance, blend elements of creative nonfiction with traditional research methods, or engage web design, sound design, graphic design, podcasting, and other modes of communication when building research projects, community outreach projects, or professional portfolios.
At the intersection of each of my research and teaching interests is a podcast that I produce, edit, and cohost. In Thinking With… A Rhetorical Theory Podcast, my cohosts Nathaniel Street (Mount Saint Vincent University), John Muckelbauer (University of South Carolina), and I talk through various theoretical texts, rhetorical concepts, and teaching strategies. Since the podcast’s inception, we have released more than 50 episodes across five seasons. As we have received positive feedback from academic and non-academic listeners alike, I have been encouraged and inspired by this enterprise, especially insofar as it blurs the line between traditional scholarship, public intellectual engagement, and pedagogical practice.
