Current Research and Research Interests

Research Interests

I am interested in the rhetorical and socio-political possibilities presented by texts. By this, I mean that I study texts that move or persuade people and/or create ideas, identities, and ideologies. I am a rhetorical critic. I analyze how texts function, how they can create change in people's lives and in the world, and to what ends texts and rhetors try to move people.

My training is in rhetoric and women's studies, and I am interested, most basically, in the ways in which people imagine better, and more equitable, ways of being.  My work places particular emphasis on the political possibilites presented by anarchism, and utopianism.  In other words, I do rhetorical criticism and theory. The texts that I study are usually popular culture and public address that features utopianism, anarchism, and feminism.

Current and Upcoming Projects

I spend most of my research time right now revising my dissertation into a book manuscript and readying the essays I wrote in graduate school for publication. Some examples of my past projects and projects currently in revision are detailed here.

My next major project explores real-world articulations of anarcha-feminism. I begin with the speeches and letters exchanged between the two most prominent anarcha-feminists of the Progressive Era: Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre. Later projects in this research stream consider the rhetoric and politics of other anarcha-feminist groups (such as Las Mujeres Creando of Bolivia and Las Mujeres Libres from Spain and the current Zapatistas).

In addition to my interests in anarchist rhetoric, I have a stream of my research agenda dedicated to feminism and relationships: to the planet, to media, and to genres. Some of the work I am revising draws from this stream, and I intend to continue pursuing it in the years to come. Some projects I am currently conceptualizing in this area include collaborative projects studying how romance changes when it moves from the page into video games and considering the relational aspects of the book, documentary, and phenomenon of No Impact Man.

Last Updated 25 September, 2011