Engaging Theory
The Inaugural Conference on
Rhetorical Theory
24-25 October 2008
The University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
Is rhetorical theory engaging? What are rhetorical theory’s contemporary (dis)engagements? How can theory be engaged in the name of energizing rhetoric’s possibility?
The inaugural Conference on Rhetorical Theory seeks to begin a critical and interdisciplinary dialogue on the priorities, objects, and potential of rhetorical theory. Looking beneath and beyond rhetoric’s “practical art,” the forum aims to both investigate the theoretical calling of rhetorical life and reflect on the ways in which rhetoric may enliven and thwart theory’s vision.
As a beginning, this year’s conference seeks a broad view of rhetorical theory and its engagements. To this end, the forum will be addressed to several general thematics, including ontology, history, identities, global everyday life, technology, the sacred, and ethics.
With neither full plenary papers nor concurrent panel sessions, the conference will take the form of a workshop. Based on their expressed interests in the conference’s thematics, each participant will be asked to join a working group and to author a short reflective essay (3-4 pages) that delineates what each participant sees as the key contemporary questions, directions, or problems related to the working group’s thematic. These essays will be circulated prior to the conference.
Working Groups
This document lists the composition of each conference working group and offers some provisional suggestions about the pre-conference and conference process for these groups. Keep in mind that these suggestions are merely our attempts to provide some basic structure for how groups might wish to proceed in a forum that we hope will function more as a workshop than a formal conference. At base, our goal is to create a space for substantial conversation and good-hearted debate concerning a wide variety of theoretical and rhetorical issues. To this end, the “topic areas” that we have chosen are quite intentionally broad and vague; we hope that each working group (and each member of the group) will feel free to pursue any number of different directions related to the topic.
We ask each participant (as well as each group coordinator) to undertake several tasks:
1) Within the next few weeks, the coordinators will initiate a conversation (over email, wiki, etc.) between members of the group over how each of them wish to approach/ define/ interpret the thematic as well as how the group wishes to organize its session at the conference (see #3).
2) We ask that, over the (northern) summer, all members of each group write a brief “reflective essay” (3-4 pages) in which each person delineates what they see as the most provocative contemporary questions, directions, and/or problems or blockages related to the thematic (as they interpret it). In addition to writing their own reflective essay, the coordinators will help to ensure that each person’s paper is distributed to the other members of the working group by September 1, 2008 (and also to us, for posting on the website).
3) At the conference in October, each group will have a 1 ½ hour session. In addition to giving their own presentation, we ask that coordinators informally chair their particular session. With respect to presentations at the conference, we ask that each group’s participants develop a brief presentation that goes beyond the reading of their reflective essay. That is, we hope that the group’s participants will develop their remarks from an engagement with the essays that are authored and pre-circulated by all members of their group. For this to succeed, it is vital that each member of each working group take care to ensure that their reflective essay is submitted to other members of the group on or before September 1.
4) Each of the reflective essays will be available on the conference website (which should come online soon) after September 1. All conference participants are encouraged to peruse the papers from other working groups.
The Working Groups:
In composing the groups, we have done our best to give everyone their highest choice. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible in a number of cases (in part because we also attempted to have scholars working from a variety of perspectives in each group). If there are questions or problems with the composition of the groups or the writing and circulation of papers, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Important Date:
1 September 2008: Position Papers due (send email copies to each member of your working group and to the conference planners at: uscrhetoricaltheory@gmail.com
Ontology’s Returns
Coordinator: Jeffrey Nealon (Penn State) nealonism@yahoo.com
Jeffrey T. Nealon teaches in the English Department at Penn State. He is author of Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensifications since 1984 (Stanford, 2008), The Theory Toolbox (with Susan Searls Giroux, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity (Duke, 1998), and Double Reading: Postmodernism after Deconstruction (Cornell, 1993), as well as editing Rethinking the Frankfurt School (with Caren
Irr, SUNY 2002). His essays specifically on the intersections of rhetoric and theory (work on Levinas, Bakhtin, Judith Butler, Adorno, Zizek, and Nietzsche, among others)
have appeared in College English, JAC, Postmodern Culture, and Theory & Event.
Stuart Murray (Ryerson) sjmurray@ryerson.ca
Stuart J. Murray received his Ph.D. (2004) in Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley, after which he completed a 2-year SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. His work is concerned with the constitution of human subjectivity and the links between rhetoric, politics, and ethics. Current research includes a book-length project on the rhetorical dimensions of biopolitics and bioethics after Foucault, a collaborative study on the politics of death (thanatopolitics), and a collected volume edited with Dave Holmes, titled, Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Healthcare (forthcoming, Ashgate Publishing, 2008). He is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Writing in the Department of English at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.
Michael Hyde (Wake Forest) hydemj@wfu.edu
Michael J. Hyde (Ph.D., Purdue University) is The University Distinguished Professor of Communication Ethics, Department of Communication, and the Program in Bioethics, Health, and Society, School of Medicine, Wake Forest University. He was the Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecturer at the 2007 NCA Convention.
Lenore Langsdorf (Southern Illinois) Lenore@siu.edu
Lenore Langsdorf is the William & Galia Minor Professor of the Philosophy of Communication in the Speech Communication Department at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters in edited volumes and is co-editor and contributor to Recovering Pragmatism's Voice: The Classical Tradition, Rorty, and the Philosophy of Communication (with Andrew Smith) and The Critical Turn: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Contemporary Discourse (with Ian Angus). She is the editor of Human Studies: A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences and the SUNY Press series in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Her research uses hermeneutic phenomenology and process philosophy to analyze constitutive processes of everyday rhetorical interaction, with particular attention to sociopolitical and cultural components.
Tentatively:
Kevin DeLuca (Georgia) kdeluca@arches.uga.edu
History, Historiography, and Violence
Coordinator: Barbara Biesecker (Georgia) Barbara-Biesecker@uiowa.edu
Barbara Biesecker teaches and writes at the intersections of rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist theory and criticism, and cultural studies. Her most recent work addresses the rhetoric and politics of WWII remembrance at the end of the 20th century and the rhetoric and politics of 9/11 and the War on Terror today. As before, she continues to study the relation of rhetoric and social change. Barbara is the 2007 recipient of the Douglas Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award.
Michelle Ballif (Georgia) MBALLIF@UGA.EDU
Michelle Ballif is Associate Professor of English at The University of Georgia, where she teaches courses in the history of rhetoric, rhetorical theory, composition, and contemporary literary and cultural theory. Her research focuses on the intersections between classical rhetoric and postmodern theory, with a particular interest in the historiography of rhetoric. She is a co-author (with Diane Davis and Roxanne Mountford) of Women's Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition (Routledge 2008), author of Seduction, Sophistry, and the Woman with the Rhetorical Figure (SIUP 2000), and co-editor (with Michael G. Moran) of Twentieth Century Rhetoric and Rhetoricians (Greenwood Press 2000)and Classical Rhetorics and Rhetoricians (Greenwood Press/Praeger 2005). She is also founder and Director of The Writing Intensive Program at UGA.
Susan Jarratt (California – Irvine) sjarratt@uci.edu
Susan C. Jarratt has published on ancient Greek rhetoric and issues of social difference in contemporary writing studies. She is author of Rereading the Sophists (Southern Illinois UP, 1991; paperback reprint, 1998) and co-editor of Feminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words (MLA, 1998) with Lynn Worsham. She is at work on a book about Greek rhetoric in the period of Roman empire for which she was granted a National Endowment for the Humanities University Fellowship (1998-99). Her current theoretical interests include public sphere, memory, and empire.
Jeffrey Walker (Texas) jswalker@mail.utexas.edu
I have come to work at the intersections of rhetoric, poetics, and the history of rhetoric (particularly classical rhetoric). I am the author of Bardic Ethos and the American Epic Poem (1989), Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity (2000), and Investigating Arguments: Readings for College Writing (with Glen McClish; 1991), and am currently working on [a] a book on rhetorical education in antiquity, and [b] a textbook on rhetorical analysis (with Mark Longaker). These days I am interested in, among other things, questioning the standard opposition in modern scholarship (and modern histories of rhetoric) between the “handbook” (techne) tradition in ancient rhetoric and the “philosophical” rhetorical tradition associated with the sophists (and frequently proposed as an alternative to the other “philosophical” tradition of Platonic and/or Aristotelian rhetorical theory): that is, I am interested in how one can be understood as an expression of the other. Another interest is sophistic historiography: why did history-writing emerge as a “signature” literary activity for sophists in antiquity?
The Call of the Sacred
Coordinator: Michael Bernard-Donals (Wisconsin) mfbernarddon@wisc.edu
Michael Bernard-Donals is the Nancy Hoefs Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; he is also an affiliate member of the Mosse-Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies. He works at the intersection of contemporary critical theory, rhetorical theory, and Holocaust studies. Recent books include Witnessing the Disaster (Wisconsin, 2002), An Introduction to Holocaust Studies (Prentice Hall, 2006), and Forgetful Memory: Remembrance and Representation in the Wake of the Shoah (SUNY Press, forthcoming).
Jim Darsey (Georgia State) jdarsey@gsu.edu
James Darsey is professor of Communication at Georgia State University. His essays on the rhetorics of radical and marginalized individuals and groups have appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Monograph, Communication Studies, Western Journal of Communication, and in various anthologies. His 1997 book, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America was the recipient of several awards. He is currently working on a book on cosmopolitan rhetoric.
Chris Lundberg (North Carolina) clundber@email.unc.edu
I am an Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My work revolves around rhetorical theory, including questions of the public, trope, affect and violence, with specific attention to the constitution of evangelical Christian publics. I also maintain a substantial investment in thinking through the relationships between rhetoric, psychoanalysis and deconstruction, and contemporary critical theory.
Carol Poster (York University) cposter@yorku.com
Carol Poster publishes primarily in history of rhetoric (especially classical, late antique, 18th and 19th century British), classical tradition, and rhetoric of religion (mainly Biblical, patristic, and 18th/19th century British). Her co-edited volume, Letter-Writing Manuals and Instruction from Antiquity to the Present, just appeared from U. of South Carolina Press, and she is finishing a book on Richard Whately for the SUNY Modern Rhetoricians series. She has been awarded the Gildersleeve Prize for best article in American Journal of Philology, the Kneupper prize for best article in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, co-directed an NEH Summer seminar, and held fellowships at POROI, St. Deiniol’s Library, the Tanner Humanities Center, and the Huntington Library.
Signs of Ethical Life
Coordinator: Diane Davis (Texas) ddd@mail.utexas.edu
Diane Davis is Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Writing, English, and Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and Professor of Critical Media Theory at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland, where she holds the Kenneth Burke Chair of Rhetoric. She is the author of Breaking Up [at] Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter (2000), co-author of Women’s Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition (with Michelle Ballif and Roxanne Mountford, 2008), and editor of The ÜberReader: Selected Works of Avital Ronell (2008). Her articles have appeared in such journals as Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Philosophy and Rhetoric, College Composition and Communication, Postmodern Culture, Rhetoric Review, and JAC. She is currently putting the finishing touches on a book project that focuses on the intersections of rhetoric and sociality, which is entitled Inessential Solidarity: Rhetoric & Foreign(er) Relations.
Maurice Charland (Concordia, Montreal) Maurice.Charland@concordia.ca
Maurice Charland is Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, where he is the director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture. Best known for his award winning article, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” he is also co-author, with Carleton University’s Michael Dorland, of Law, Rhetoric, and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Public Culture (U Toronto Press, 2002). His research explores the intersection of critical rhetoric and normative political theory. Inspired both by Kenneth Burke and Jean-François Lyotard, his work addresses rhetoric’s necessary constitutive function in the face of contingency, incommensurability, and aporia. In addition, his interests include the relationship of rhetoric to public culture, South African Studies, and more recently the relationship of rhetoric to jazz and jazz culture.
Lynn Clarke (Pittsburgh) lynn.clarke@vanderbilt.edu
Lynn Clark is an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her interests in classical, modern, and contemporary rhetorical theory are presently provoked, in large part, by deep-seated social disputes and public deliberation. Currently finishing a book manuscript on traumatic social controversy, rhetoric, and deliberative politics, Clarke is also working on a second book length project that takes up the question of judicial rhetoric and its relationship to controversial terms of law, in the context of constitutional democracies. Clarke has published her work in several spaces including Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and Argumentation and Advocacy.
Brook Rollins (Louisiana State) brollins@lsu.edu
Brooke Rollins is an assistant professor of rhetoric at Louisiana State University with specializations in classical rhetoric and critical theory. Her current project is a book titled Ghostwriting Ethos: Beyond Character and the Character Beyond, which re-reads the ancient Greek concept of ethos through the work of Jacques Derrida. Brooke completed her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina in 2007, and her work has appeared in College English, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and The Velvet Light Trap.
Victor Vitanza (Clemson) sophist@clemson.edu
Victor Vitanza is Professor of English at Clemson University and Professor of Rhetoric and Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee,Switzerland, where he holds the Jean-Francois Lyotard Chair. He is the Founding Director of the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design Ph.D. program at Clemson, situated in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities. He is the author of Negation, Subjectivity, and The History of Rhetoric; editor of Writing Histories of Rhetoric and of PRE/TEXT: The First Decade as well as CyberReader (3 editions). He has published in such journals as Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Review, Argumentation, JAC, Enculturation, and Parallax. He is presently editing his book manuscript, Chaste Rape, and has begun two other books, Design as Dasein and James A. Berlin and Cultural Studies.
Rhetorical/Theory
Coordinators: John Muckelbauer & Erik Doxtader (South Carolina) muckelba@mailbox.sc.edu /doxtader@rhetoricaltheory.com
John Muckelbauer is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of South Carolina. His book, The Future of Invention: Rhetoric, Postmodernism, and the Problem of Change (SUNY 2008), links classical rhetorical practices of invention with the philosophical work of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze in order to offer a non-dialectical, “affirmative” sense of change.
Erik Doxtader is a Professor of Rhetoric at the University of South Carolina (USA) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town (ZA). Addressed to both the rhetorical theory and practice of reconciliation, much of his current work reflects on the relationship between speech, violence, and the invention of (democratic) politics. He has authored, edited, and co-edited a number of books and essays on the history and dynamics of reconciliation in South Africa, including The Provocations of Amnesty (2003), To Repair the Irreparable: Reparation and Reconstruction in South Africa (2004), and Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa – The Fundamental Documents (2007).His most recent book, entitled With Faith in the Works of Words: The Beginnings of Reconciliation in South Africa, 1985-1995,will be released in May 2008.
Michael Leff (Memphis) m_leff@bellsouth.net
Michael Leff is professor and chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Memphis. He has held previous appointments at the University of California-Davis, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Northwestern University. His main research and teaching interests are the history of rhetoric, rhetorical criticism, and argumentation. He has published widely in these areas and has been designated as a distinguished scholar by the National Communication Association and the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. He is President-Elect of the Rhetoric Society of America.
Philippe-Joseph Salazar (Cape Town) philippe.salazar@uct.ac.za and
www.rhetoricafrica.org
A graduate in philosophy, literature and politics from Ecole normale supérieure and the Sorbonne (Paris), a former student of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes and Marc Fumaroli, Philippe-Joseph Salazar is Distinguished Professor in Rhetoric at the University of Cape Town. He is a former Director in Rhetoric and Democracy at Jacques Derrida's foundation, Collége International de Philosophie, Paris. Among his publications, which span a wide field of enquiry in the theory, history and culture of rhetoric, his African Athens (2002), Amnistier l'Apartheid (2004) and Mahomet (2005) have garnered special praises. In 2007, he co-authored with Erik Doxtader, Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa -The Fundamental Documents.
Raúl Sánchez (Florida) rsanchez@english.ufl.edu
Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida. Research interests involve writing studies, rhetorical theory, and composition theory. Is currently trying to theorize possible relationships between notions of identity and acts of writing, with limited success.
Tentatively:
Steven Mailloux (California – Irvine) sjmaillo@uci.edu
The Global Everyday
Coordinator: Ron Greene (Minnesota) green179@umn.edu
Ron Greene investigates how different institutions regulate and advocate communication as a technique of liberal governance. He is particularly interested in how rhetoric circulates as both an ethic of self -fashioning and a mode of immaterial labor. Presently, he is writing a history of the YMCA’s leadership role in the distribution of educational and industrial films to assess the role of cultural markets in the modernization of pastoral power. The Critical and Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication Association and the American Forensic Association have honored his contributions to rhetorical and argumentation theory.
He is the author of Malthusian Worlds: US Leadership and the Governing of the Population Crisis and is one of the founding organizers and former Chair of the Critical and Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication Association and currently holds a leadership role in the Rhetoric and Communication Theory Division. He also serves on the editorial boards of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Monographs, Communication Theory and the Western Journal of Communication.
Barry Brummett (Texas) brummett@mail.utexas.edu
Barry Brummett is the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor in Communication and Chair of Communication Studies at the University of Texas-Austin. He researches the rhetoric of popular culture. His latest book is from Southern Illinois University Press, A Rhetoric of Style.
Christine Garlough (Wisconsin) clgarlough@wisc.edu
My research is situated at the intersection of critical rhetorical theory, hermeneutical theory, and performance theory. In recent years, I have been particularly interested in pursuing the potential of “critical play” in order to understand the performative work of politically and socially marginalized groups. In one line of research, I collaborate with grassroots feminist groups in India to learn about their use of street theater as a means to address domestic abuse, rape, dowry practices, and pre-natal sex determination tests. In another, I consider South Asian American political performances that focus upon experiences of violence, from hate crimes to sexual abuse. I am particularly interested in exploring critical play within autobiographical performances featured in documentaries, progressive community theater, and cultural festivals. These forms of witnessing are the focus of a book manuscript in progress titled Performance, Play, and Politics: Acknowledgement and Advocacy through Grassroots Rhetoric.
Jenny Rice (Missouri) ricejh@missouri.edu
Jenny Edbauer Rice (PhD, The University of Texas) is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Missouri. Her work has appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, JAC, College Composition and Communication, and Postmodern Culture. She is currently finishing a book manuscript addressing public rhetoric, affect, and issues of displacement through urban development.
(Im)possible Democracy
Coordinator: John Sloop (Vanderbilt) john.m.sloop@vanderbilt.edu
John M. Sloop (Ph.D. Iowa, 1992) is Professor of Communication Studies and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt University. He is currently the editor of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. The author and editor of several books, including Disciplining Gender, Sloop has made his primary focus the investigation of the common sense logics/ideology underpinning public controversy. He is currently working on a book length manuscript that investigates the links between communication technologies, mobility, ideology and citizenship. Essays included in this project include critical readings of racing, Saturn automobile, dvd players, and peer reviewed essays concerned the links between cell phones and driving.
Sarah Burgess (San Francisco) sburgess@usfca.edu
Sarah Burgess completed her M.A./Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley in the Department of Rhetoric. She is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of San Francisco. Working at the intersection of philosophy, rhetorical theory, legal theory, and political theory, her research studies how we might build pluralistic democracies in contemporary society. Sarah is currently working on two projects that both investigate how we might wrest justice out of positive law. The first is a manuscript, Standing Before the Law: Recognition, Power, and the Limits of Identity, that examines the UK Gender Recognition Act (2004) to understand how marginalized individuals gain a voice in law through practices of legal recognition. The second, tentatively titled “Violent Bodies of Law,” is a study of the relationship between positive law and state violence in international law addressing sexual violence in ethnic, racial, religious, or political conflicts.
David Rieder (North Carolina State) dmrieder@ncsu.edu
David M. Rieder is an Assistant Professor of English who specializes in rhetoric, composition, and critical theory. His areas of interest include digital culture, “placeless” culture, computer programming, and digital writing/art. He is working on a book project about creative explorations of writing with Actionscript 3, the programming language bundled with Adobe Flash 9+.
Bradford Vivian (Syracuse) bjvivian@syr.edu
Bradford Vivian (PhD, Pennsylvania State University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University. His research specialties include rhetorical theory, public memory, and U.S. public address. He is the author of Being Made Strange: Rhetoric beyond Representation. His work has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, the Western Journal of Communication, JAC, andthe Journal of Speculative Philosophy. He is the recipient of an NEH Summer Stipend and the B. Aubrey Fisher Award.
Technological Inventions
Coordinator: Carolyn Miller (North Carolina State) crmiller@ncsu.edu
Carolyn R. Miller is SAS Institute Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication at North Carolina State University, where she has taught since 1973. She received her Ph.D. in Communication and Rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her research interests are in digital rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and the rhetoric of science and technology. She has published in journals such as Argumentation, College English, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetorica, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly, as well as in many edited volumes. She has lectured and taught in North America, Europe, and South America. She is a past president of the Rhetoric Society of America and current editor of Rhetoric Society Quarterly.
Collin Brooke (Syracuse) cbrooke@syr.edu
Collin Gifford Brooke is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Syracuse University, where he directs the Composition and Cultural Rhetoric PhD program. He is currently the Associate/Online Editor of College Composition and Communication, responsible for the CCC Online Archive. His first book, Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media is forthcoming from Hampton Press; he is currently at work on a second, tentatively titled RhetWorks: An Introduction to the Study of Discursive Networks.
Thomas Goodnight (Southern California) gtg@usc.edu
Tom Goodnight is a professor of Communication and director of doctoral studies at the Annenberg School of Communication. Previously, he was professor and director of the doctoral program at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. His current interests include globalization, communication revolutions, political economy, and postwar cultures.
Thomas Rickert (Purdue) trickert@purdue.edu
Thomas Rickert is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Purdue University. His areas of interest include the usual suspects: histories and theories of rhetoric, critical theory, composition, cultural studies, music, and digital culture. His book, Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Zizek, and the Return of the Subject, has been published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Recent work includes an essay on the chōra in Philosophy and Rhetoric, a chapter on kairos and place in the edited collection The Locations of Composition, and several co-authored pieces on music, new media, and Heidegger. He is currently working on a book tentatively titled "Ambient Rhetoric." He is also reading way too much Heidegger and drinking too little wine.