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Greetings!  I am an Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. Thanks for visiting my website. You are also welcome to check out my faculty page here.

My recent book, Soapbox Rebellion: The Hobo Orator Union and the Free Speech Fights of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1909-1916, explores the historical roots of the struggle for freedom of expression and radical labor movements in the United States.

My research and teaching are motivated by a longstanding commitment to producing communication scholarship that addresses central concerns of the twenty-first century: how and to what extent public discourse expresses the tensions, contradictions, and differentials of power in modern societies.  As a scholar of rhetoric, my commitment to this concern manifests in my ongoing research on the intersections of the rhetoric of organized labor and capitalism, freedom of expression and collective responsibility, and the public advocacy of radical reform and social stability.  This research seeks to provide novel syntheses of rhetorical scholarship, the history of American public address, and the advance guard conceptual formulations of postmodern social and cultural theory. Check out samples of my research here.

Prior to joining Texas A&M, I received my PhD in 2009 from the University of Minnesota. I held the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Public Address at Colgate University. I then served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at NC State.

You can find my publications in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Rhetoric and Society Quarterly, the Journal of Communication Inquiry, and the proceedings of the Alta AFA/NCA Conference on Argumentation.