Summary
Chris studies and teaches US political rhetoric, focusing on how our political languages define difference and inequality. He is especially interested in how political figures, advocates, and social movements draw upon and contest available languages and ideas in order to address present problems. Recent work, appearing in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Argumentation and Advocacy, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly, examines “postracial” uses of evidence to rationalize inequality in the criminal justice system and to roll-back protections of voting rights. He is currently working on essays on the “politics of the family” in the 1960s and 1970s and a book on the shifting representation of workers in US national politics over the twentieth century.
Research Interests
- Political Rhetoric
- Race/ism
- Rhetoric and Democracy
Courses Taught
- Understanding Arguments
- Rhetorics of Culture and Identity
- Public Policy Writing and Rhetoric
- Contemporary Rhetorical Theory and Criticism
- Writing with/in Communities
- Public Humanities (grad seminar)
Recent Peer-Reviewed Articles
- “Postracial Presumptions: The Supreme Court’s Undoing of the Voting Rights Act through Racial Ignorance.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 53.2 (2023): 247-61.
- “‘Guided by Ghosts of the post-Civil War Era’: Felon Disenfranchisement and the Limits of Race Liberal Advocacy.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 2.1 (2022): 1-29.
- “‘All the Research Says’: Manufactured Consensus and the Burden of Proof in the Racialized Police Violence Controversy.” Argumentation and Advocacy 58.2 (2022): 65-82.
- “‘More Resilient than Concrete and Steel: Consciousness-Raising, Self-Discipline, and Bodily Resistance in Solitary Confinement.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly2 (2020): 124-38.
Education
- Ph.D. English (Composition and Rhetoric), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016