Education 

PhD, Northwestern University
MA, Central Michigan University
BA, Indiana University – Indianapolis

Areas of Specialization 

Political Communication
Religion and Public Culture
Rhetorical Criticism

Recently Taught Courses 

ENGL 793:    Rhetorical Theory and Practice: Medieval to Modern
ENGL/SPCH 387:    Introduction to Rhetoric 
SPCH 260:    Argumentation and Debate 
SPCH 230:    Business and Professional Speaking 
SPCH 140:    Fundamentals of Public Communication 
SCHC 158:    Honors Rhetoric

Professional Accolades 

Graduate Dissertation Award in Communication Studies, Northwestern University, Department of Communication, 2011

Current Research Projects 

My research focuses on political communication and public culture with a particular emphasis on the ways in which discourses about religion and religious communities shape the contemporary political landscape.

Selected Publications

BOOKS   
  • Rhetoric of the Protestant Sermon in America: Pulpit Discourse at the Turn of the Millennium, co-edited with Eric C. Miller (Lexington Books, 2020).
   • Superchurch: The Rhetoric and Politics of American Fundamentalism (Michigan State University Press, 2015). 

SELECTED ARTICLES   
   • “Democracy’s End: Far-Right Fundamentalism and the Rhetoric of R. J. Rushdoony,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2024): 351-65. 
   • “Memes, Condensation Symbols, and the Changing Landscape of Political Rhetoric,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 39, no. 1 (2022): 29-41.
   • “Unresolved: Public Speaking Instruction Beyond Persuasion,” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 21, no. 4 (2021): 48-55. 
   • “Is Trump Also Among the Fundamentalists? Religious Freedom and the Fight to Repeal the Johnson Amendment,” in The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom in the United States, edited by Eric C. Miller (Lexington Books, 2018), 201-15. 
   • “What Do We Mean By ‘Radicalization?’” Communication Currents 10, no. 2 (2015), 
   • “Figuring Radicalization: Congressional Narratives of Homeland Security and American Muslim Communities,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 102-20.  
   • “Countersymbols and the Constitution of Resistance in American Fundamentalism, 1919-1922,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 17, no. 3 (2014): 421-54. 
   • “Calvin and Hobbes: Trinity, Authority, and Community,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 42, no. 2 (2009), 115-33. 
   • “Jonathan Edwards: ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ (8 July 1741),” Voices of Democracy 1 (2006): 187-207. 

Selected Presentations

   • “‘America is No Longer Beautiful in Our Textbooks:’ Aesthetics, Book Bans, and Conflicts Over School Curricula in the 1980s,” Paper delivered at the Biannual Meeting of the Rhetoric Society of America, Denver, Colorado, May 2024.
   • “(Whose) Freedom in the Classroom?: Rhetorics of Parental Rights and Expert Judgment in American Education,” Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, National Harbor, Maryland, November 2023.
   • “Rhetorics of Religious Freedom and Pandemic Persecution: Opening Grace Community Church in the Time of COVID,” Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Religious Communication Association, Washington, D.C., November 2023.
   • “Educating Against Democracy: Christian Nationalism, School Curricula, and the Rhetoric of R. J. Rushdoony,” Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Southern States Communication Association, St. Petersburg, Florida, April 2023.
   • “Billy Graham, ‘Finding Answers,’ and the Rhetoric of Nixonian Fundamentalism in 1973,” Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 2022.
   • “Freedom from Rights: The Rhetoric of Authority and Abuse in American Fundamentalism,” Paper delivered at the Biannual Meeting of the Rhetoric Society of America, Baltimore, Maryland, May 2022. 
   • “Race, Post-Race, and the Rhetoric of Fundamentalist Segregation at Bob Jones University,” Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Southern States Communication Association, Greenville, SC, April 2022.
   • “Whose American Heritage? Christian Textbooks and Historical Transformation in the 1970s,” Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association,” Seattle, Washington, November 2021.
   • “Teaching the Pandemic: Speech and Community Building Through Bricolage,” Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association,” Seattle, Washington, November 2021. 
   • “The War on Refugee Terror: Traumatic Memes and the American Other,” Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association,” November 2020. 
   • “The Paradox of the Political Sermon,” Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association,” Salt Lake City, Utah, November 2018. 
   • “Plain Speech, Political Correctness, and the Rhetoric of ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism,’” Paper delivered at the Biannual Meeting of the Rhetoric Society of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 2018.