Education 

Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University

Specialization 

   • History of Rhetoric
   • Contemporary Rhetorical Theory
   • Rhetoric and Philosophy
   • Enlightenment Rhetoric

Courses 

SCHC 158    Honors Rhetoric
SPCH 140    Public Communication
SPCH 230    Business and Professional Communication

Research Projects 

I am currently finishing and revising a book-length project examining Immanuel Kant's ostensible rejection of rhetoric as unworthy of respect. In texturing different source materials (biography, philosophical texts, occasional and more obscure texts, correspondence, etc.), I seek to complexify this reduction, often taken on face, and assemble a case that Kant–while rejecting manipulative and vacuous rhetoric–actually prioritizes within enlightenment many elements long considered clearly under the purview of rhetoric. In this context, I am also working on a few articles examining some offshoots of this larger project including Kant's connections to the British rhetorical tradition and Kant's account of writing as public address in his attack against unauthorized publication.

Publications 

   • "Arendt, Adorno, and Benjamin: Response, Responsibility, and Commitment." Communication Ethics: Between Cosmopolitanism and Provinciality. Ed. Kathleen Glenister Roberts and Ronald C. Arnett. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. 215-239. (Volume 12 in Thomas Nakayama's series in Critical Intercultural Communication).
   • "Stanley's Subjects: Interrogations of Humanism in Kubrick's Later Films." Co-authored with Pat J. Gehrke. Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick and the Uses of History, James Diedrick, Geoff Cocks, and Glenn Perusek (Eds.), University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. 101-121.
   • "Burke Contra Kierkegaard: Burke's Dialectic via Reading Søren Kierkegaard." Philosophy and Rhetoric 36 (2003): 207-222.

Presentations 

   • "The Situated and Contextual Nature of Universal and Timeless Kantian Ethics: Kant's Groundwork to a Metaphysics of Morals." (Presented at the 2010 Communication Ethics Conference in Pittsburgh, PA).
   • "Judgment Revisited: Rethinking the Political through Arendt and Kant." (Presented at the 2010 Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Minneapolis, MN).
   • "The Conflicted Territory of Rhetoric in Kant." (Presented at the 2008 Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Seattle, WA).
   • "History of the Present: Ethics, Politics, and History with Constant Reference to the Enlightenment." (Presented at the 2007 National Communication Association Convention in Chicago, IL).
   • "Strange Affinities and Divergences: Agency and Subjectivity in Rhetorical Studies." (Presented at the 2007 National Communication Association Convention in Chicago, IL).
   • "The Multiple at the Origin: Descartes, Bacon, and Vico and the Enlightenment." (Presented at the 2006 National Communication Association Convention in San Antonio, TX).
   • "The Open Source Movement and the Politics of Authenticity."(Presented at the 2006 National Communication Association Convention in San Antonio, TX).
   • "Arendt, Adorno, and Benjamin: Response, Responsibility, and Commitment." (Presented at the 2006 National Communication Ethics Conference in Pittsburgh, PA).
   • "Inaugural Time: Inheritance and Agency in William Jefferson Clinton's First Inaugural." (Presented at the 2005 Eastern Communication Conference in Pittsburgh, PA).
   • "Derrida, Levinas, and the Adieu." (Presented at the 2001 National Communication Association Convention in Atlanta, GA).
   • "Post-structuralism and Argumentation: Jacques Derrida's Deconstruction and the Question of Resistance." (Presented at the 2000 International Debate Education Association Conference on Debate and Democratization in Budapest, Hungary).
   • "Strategic and Deconstructive Resistance in Jacques Derrida." (Presented at the 2000 Eastern Communication Association Conference in Pittsburgh, PA).
   • "The Owl of Minerva: The Perils and Possibilities of Writing the Future." Co-authored with Pat J. Gehrke. (Presented at the 2000 Southern States Communication Association Conference in New Orleans, LA).
   • "The Importance of Heraclitus to the Study of the History of Rhetoric." (Presented at the 1999 Southern States/Central States Communication Association joint conference in St. Louis, MO).
   • "Burke Contra Kierkegaard." (Top Student Competitive Paper for the Kenneth Burke Society, 1998 National Communication Association Convention in New York, NY).