This page lists some projects I am currently working on as well as early drafts. I welcome any comments and suggestions. You can access all projects directly here.
My DissertationMy dissertation explores political temporalities in film. Specifically I look at three queer films (Stonewall, The living End, and A Single Man) and identify how each advocates a particular political identity and ideology by the way it manages and distributes time. I argue that each film is about constructing an embodied experience through time. As such, the affective audience experience is constructed through an encounter with a rhetorical situation which emphasizes certain identities and political dispositions. While each of the three political models exists in the LGBT movement today, I argue that one based on expanding relationships in the present (both interpersonally and collectively through coalitions) is of most use for our current political situation.Philosophy of HistoryThis essay was an early part of my methodology section, though it has since been radically revised I will continue to pursue the arguments laid out in this draft elsewhere. In it I am attempting to forward a theory of genealogical criticism that attempts to take into account a theory of time that does not negate the presence of materiality and lived experience. Elements of it will remain in the dissertation, but the extended rumination on Hegel's history of time via Deleuze via Butler will be reworked into a separate project.
Previous Essay on Screaming QueensI wrote this essay as part of my initial exploration into film and histories of Stonewall. It argues for a complex temporality of repetition to explain the political motives behind "Screaming Queens" attempt to ground tans identity in a pre-Stonewall "Stonewall" of sorts.
Previous Essay on Representations of Stonewall in Book-Length StudiesI presented this essay at the 2008 NCA conference. It maps out a strategy for distinguishing different political modalities via their representations of history. While these specific texts aren't in my dissertation, the methodological process is.
On the Pleasure of the (Sex)TextThis essay (formerly "In Defense of Intellectual Masturbation") was submitted to Text and Performance Quarterly and received a revise and resubmit (three times! twice to a special issue and once again as a regular submision). I have just submitted my final revision. Thanks to all who have supported my efforts on this essay for the past two years. The essay is a response to "SexText" in which I take on the role of The Porter from Macbeth and argue for a clearer understanding of the concept of pleasure in Barthe's textual theory and a shift from an epistemology of desire and its politics of transgression to an ontology of pleasure and becoming. Letter to Reviewers (5 page intro/explanation/rationale) Reentering the Rhetorical SituationThis essay was nominated for the Donald P. Cushman Memorial Award (top student paper overall) at the National Communication Association 2009 convention. In it I reexamine the debates stemming from Bitzer's classic "Rhetorical Situation" essay through Deleuzian philosophy and argue that we must understand the rhetorical situation as always being entered into but never inhabited, that subjectivity is always a becoming of pure nonteleological potentiality, and as a result rhetorical agency must be understood as a risking dissolution. The Queer Rhetoric Project While AmericanRhetoric.com provides invaluable resources for scholars and teachers of rhetoric and public speech, it does not adequately address LGBT issues. The Queer Rhetoric Project seeks to archive historical and contemporary speeches, texts, and videos relating to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights. Initial sections will include Harvey Milk, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Stonewall. What Can Butler do for Rhetorical Studies after the Performative?In this essay I am exploring Judith Butler's ethical theories and how they might expand our theories of subjectivity and recognize the ontological basis for assuming responsibility.
Brokeback MountainThis essay is based on my Master's thesis (available here). This essay is attempting to expand on the idea that public sphere theory needs to grapple more clearly with the radically individual nature of rhetorical expression.
Women's Holocaust TestimoniesThis essay is based on my undergraduate thesis. It theorizes a new way to understand the relation between social expectations and women's Holocaust testimonies. This paper received Top Student Paper in Gender Studies Division,
Southern States Communication Association 2006.
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