Publications

Journal Articles

“Epideictic Priming amid COVID-19: Metonymy under the Microscope.” Paper proposal accepted to Journal for the History of Rhetoric, forthcoming, ~5000 words.

“Masked Meanings: COVID-19 and the Subversion of Stasis Hierarchy.” Coauthored with Genevieve Gordon. Rhetoric Review, vol. 41, no. 4, 2022, pp. 249-65 [lead essay].

“‘Redemption Follows Allocution’: Dan Harmon and the #MeToo Apology.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, vol. 9, no. 3/4, 2019, 112-25.

Analyzes writer Dan Harmon’s improbably well received #MeToo-era apology, arguing that traditionally individualistic conceptions of the apology genre poorly suit the rhetorical situation of the #MeToo movement.

“Dystopoi of Memory and Invention: The Rhetorical ‘Places’ of Postmodern Dystopian Film.” Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2018, pp. 116-34.

Employs the examples of Alien, Outland, and Blade Runner to examine the relationship between classical memory loci and the rhetorical use of place (topos) in postmodern dystopian film.

“Literacy and Rhetoric as Complementary Keywords.” Literacy in Composition Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2017, pp. 103-12.

Responds to Brenda Glascott’s article “Constricting Keywords: Rhetoric and Literacy in our History Writing,” arguing that rhetoric and literacy constitute complementary ends of the same spectrum rather than oppositional terms.

“Jameson, Burke, and the Virus of Suggestion: Between Ideology and Rhetoric.” Henry James Review, vol. 36, no. 3, 2015, pp. 280-87.

Revisits a famous academic spat between Kenneth Burke and Fredric Jameson, magnifying the disagreement through Henry James’s novel The Spoils of Poynton and arguing that the two theorists’ perspectives are finally compatible.

“The Cinematic Topos of Disability and the Example of Avatar: A Rhetorical Critique.” Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, pp. 40-59.

Analyzes and criticizes the rhetorical use of disability in James Cameron’s Avatar, arguing that the film’s rhetoric reifies disabled people as rhetorical devices rather than autonomous characters.

“Picking Up the Fragments of the 2012 Election: Memes, Topoi, and Political Rhetoric.” Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015.

Rhetorically analyzes the “meme war” surrounding the 2012 election, arguing that transitory fragments like “binders full of women” function as rhetorical topoi and, in turn, prompt us to reconsider the ostensible fixity of “the topics.”

“‘You Know the Business and I Know the Chemistry’: The Scientific Ethos of Breaking Bad.” Coauthored with Stephanie Weaver. Excursions, vol. 4, no. 1, 2013, [17 pp.].

Analysis of the uses of scientific imagery and language toward rhetorical credibility in the TV series Breaking Bad.

“Toward a Polyphonic Model of Student Coauthorship: A Response to Joseph Harris and Julie Lindquist.” JAC, vol. 32, no. 3-4, 2012, 743-51.

Responds to articles by Harris and Lindquist to advocate what Mikhail Bakhtin would call a polyphonic model of coauthoriship with students, one that balances the authority of discrete voices within the same text.

Book Chapters

“The Other Toulmin Model: Concepts, Topoi, Evolution.” Re-Inventing Rhetoric Scholarship: 50 Years of the Rhetoric Society of America, edited by Roxanne Mountford, Dave Tell, and David Blakesley, Parlor, 2020, pp. 79-87.

Proposes an evolutionary understanding of rhetorical topoi through analogy to Stephen Toulmin’s discussion of disciplinary concepts and their evolution.

“The Audiovisual Palimpsest: Rhetoric, Poetics, and Heteroglossia in Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000: Critical Approaches, edited by Shelley S. Rees, Scarecrow, 2013, pp. 13-29.

Employs Mikhail Bakhtin’s discourse theory to analyze the satirically multi-voiced rhetorical form of the cult TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Book Reviews

Review of Cruel Auteurism: Affective Digital Mediations toward Film-Composition, by bonnie lenore kyburz. Enculturation, vol. 30, 2020.

Review of Mikhail Bakhtin: Rhetoric, Poetics, Dialogics, Rhetoricality, by Don Bialostosky. Composition Studies, vol. 46, no. 1, 2018, pp. 174-77.

“The Descent of Evolutionism.” Review of Rhetorical Darwinism: Religion, Evolution, and the Scientific Identity by Thomas M. Lessl. Enculturation, vol. 18, 2015.

Creative Writing

“From a Train to Uppsala” [poem]. Dunes Review, vol. 23, no. 2, 2019, p. 10.

“Schrödinger’s Wrist Shot” [fiction]. Echo Cognitio, Founding ed., 2013, pp. 26-28.

“Bogie’s End” [fiction]. Xylem: The University of Michigan Undergraduate Literary Journal, vol. 18, 2008, pp. 62-65.

“Casablanca” [poem]. Dunes Review, vol. 9, no. 1, 2004, p. 5.

Interview

“Don’t Fear the Blank Page: Ben Wetherbee on the Art of Writing.” By Christopher Wilson, 580 Monthly, Dec. 2020, pp. 22-23.

Miscellany

Editor’s Introductions, The Drover Review, vol. 3, 2020, pp. vii-xii; vol. 2, 2019, pp. vii-xii; vol. 1, 2018, pp. vii-xiii.

“Progressive Profiteering: The Appeal and Argumentation of Avatar.” Inventing Arguments, by John Mauk and John Metz, 3rd ed., Wadsworth, 2013, pp. 120-22. Reprinted in 4th ed., pp. 104-06.