Research

My goal as a student in the Rhetoric and Composition doctoral program is to resume my examination of national identity construction through the lens of rhetorical theory. I want to study the ways in which constitutive rhetorics in the public sphere establish public perception of the
American identity and the markers with which American identity is either accepted or denied. I will study how the rhetoric we consume as students and citizens influences our acceptance of traditional “American” signifiers while heightening our distrust of signifiers that don’t fit easily

within this framework. I will study how, through rhetoric, the public perception of the American identity can and must be reimagined to include all of whom we are. And I will demonstrate through research that pulls together traditional rhetorical criticism and theory, feminist rhetorical
criticism and theory, and critical literary theory that the constitutive rhetorical moves that have established the ideological and philosophical fractures in this nation can also be put to work toward sealing the cracks in the infrastructure of our national identity: not by covering up the
cracks, but by filling the gaps left open by unacknowledged voices.