Rhetoric is both broad and deep; consequently, those who study it tend to have interests of a similar scope. My own research moves from African American to presidential rhetoric and from the history of rhetoric to the rhetoric of history. To explicate my interests and involvement in the field of rhetorical studies, this page is divided into several sections. Since this page is lengthy (contrary to good web design), you can select a single section from this table of contents.

Education and Background

I began my graduate career at Purdue University where I earned a Masters degree under the direction of Denise Bostdorff and with the assistance of Charles Stewart and Steven Vibbert. At Purdue, I completed a thesis on the presidential apologia of embattled administration appointments. I also received a University Fellowship for minority students, graduating with an M.A. in Rhetoric and Issue Management (1991).

I began graduate studies at Northwestern University in the Fall of 1991 with a Minority Student Fellowship. At Northwestern I worked with my advisor Michael Leff, and G. Thomas Goodnight, Michael Hyde, and Thomas Farrell. I also was fortunate to act as a teaching and research assistant to then Dean, David Zarefsky. My interests in the "neo-modern" philosophy of Jurgen Habermas led to a class with Thomas McCarthy in the Philosophy Department; however, most of my external course work was in History. With Nancy McLean I explored men and women's labor history and with James Oakes I studied the Civil War and Reconstruction. In the last year of my graduate education, I was named a University Scholar, and I received a Provost Fellowship (1994-1995).

Most of my graduate research centered on U.S. political discourse from 1850 to 1877. My dissertation entitled, "Race, Rights, and Equality: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Congressional Debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1875" examined the first desegregation measure ever passed in the United States. Few realize that from 1870 to 1875 congress argued over a bill that integrated the country's hotels, transportation facilities, restaurants, churches, cemeteries, juries, and public schools. My dissertation combined the perspectives of public address, close textual analysis, and a linguistic theory of social change to study the debate over racial desegregation. Completed in December 1995, this project received a Dissertation Award from Northwestern's School of Speech. In January of 1996, I was hired into a tenure-track position by the Communication Studies Department at the University of Minnesota.

Research and Publications to Date

My first publication did not result from either my Masters or Ph.D. theses. Rather, an essay on W. E. B. Du Bois's the Souls of Black Folk appeared in the Iowa Journal of Communication in 1995. Du Bois's early philosophy and rhetoric are a long-standing interest of mine, and in 1999 I published a second essay in the Western Journal of Communication on his theory of racial identity. "Towards a Discursive Theory of Racial Identity" suggests that the turn toward social/discursive constructions of race was the result of resistance to nineteenth century racial science. My purpose in this essay is twofold: First, I wish to unpack the particular discursive moment represented by Du Bois's rhetoric. Second, I seek to uncover the correlation between discursive practice and rhetorical theories that implicate race. These motives are evident in much of my scholarship including an entry on Black Abolitionist Rhetoric (Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, 2001), an essay on Abraham Lincoln's rhetorical leadership (Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2000) and plenary presentations at the biennial Public Address Conference (Penn State, 2000) and Texas A&M University's Presidency Conference (2000, 2002).

My scholarship on the 1875 Civil Rights Act has lead to two articles, one book chapter, and one book. In 1998 the Quarterly Journal of Speech published "The Contested Space of Prudence" as a lead essay. This article used the congressional debate over desegregation to contend that critics must extend the theory of prudence to acknowledge how it is a node of contestation. Rather than begin with a classical conceptualization, rhetorical critics should examine how a debate's interlocutors lay claim to the "prudent space" of a controversy. In 1999, I illustrated this point by exploring the "transcendental prudence" of Senator Charles Sumner in an essay published by Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Finally, my book entitled Reconstruction's Desegregation Debate: The Politics of Equality and the Rhetoric of Place was published by Michigan State University Press in 2002. This project extends the dissertation by contextualizing the debate within two contexts: the decline of Reconstruction politics and the rise of Jim Crow rhetoric and political culture. It contributes to Rhetorical Studies by illuminating the interplay between progressive and conservative arguments in civil rights debate. It contributes to American Studies by offering a discursive explanation for the decline of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. It contributes to Afro-American Studies by highlighting the black male politicians who helped alter the rhetorical and political cultures of the nineteenth century.

This research has led to five honors. In 2002, I received the Karl R. Wallace Award from the National Communication Association. In 2001, I received the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division's "New Investigator Award". My book project received a two-year "Multicultural Faculty Research Grant" from the University of Minnesota. And, on two separate occasions, the combined Black Caucus / African American Communication and Culture Division of NCA has given my scholarship special recognition awards (1998, 1999).

Latest Research Project

In 2000, Stephen Browne invited me to present an essay at the biennial Public Address Conference at Penn State. I used that opportunity to pursue a new line of research. While studying nineteenth century ethnology, I stumbled across a persistent theme among naturalists, biologists, and social scientists. With surprising unanimity, these scholars contended that imitation was a defining characteristic of black female and male identity. African Americans were labeled talented imitators, but they were said to lack creative thought and reasoning. When black women tried to limit or redefine their role in the post-Civil War economy, whites derided their choices as an ultimately frustrated attempt to mimic white women. The efforts of black men to participate in politics were condemned as acts against nature. In short, the nineteenth century's white elite affirmed that black "imitation" was further evidence of the race's inferiority.

These arguments led me to consider the relationship between the denigration of black imitation and the attempt to limit African American liberty after the Emancipation Proclamation. Furthermore, I questioned whether a correlation existed between the rise of the imitation stereotype and the decline of imitation/mimesis in aesthetics and philosophy. Eventually, I wrote an essay that contrasts imitation as defined by the Louis Agassiz and the concept as described by Frederick Douglass. I since have presented this essay at Penn State, the University of Washington, Texas A\&M University, and the University of Minnesota. It has been received enthusiastically, and it is under review with the Quarterly Journal of Speech.

For several reasons, I have decided to expand this study into a book. First, I believe that the theory of imitation must evolve to account for the history of racial politics. Second, I want to facilitate a conversation between rhetorical studies and other fields that have embraced imitation as a politically subversive activity. Third, this project provides an opportunity to strengthen my scholarship by incorporating theories of class and gender. My research, to date, has attended to the efforts of black men. I need to complicate my scholarship by including black women's discourse more centrally and by employing the theories that these voices suggest (e.g., the intersections of domination and multiple jeopardy). Finally, I want to expand my object of study, incorporating aspects of cultural expression like black theater and music.

1. How did the racial politics of Europe and the United States interact with the theory and public appreciation of imitation from the mid-eighteenth through the twentieth century?
   
2. How is the interaction between race and imitation evident in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, and the biological and social sciences?
   
3. How is the interaction between race and imitation evident in America's popular and political cultures?
   
4. How did African American women and men approach the practice and theory of imitation, and what did their articulations mean for the concept's evolution?

Currently, the book is structured as follows.

1. Chapter one is an introduction to the topic and a description of my thesis.
2. Chapter two explores the concept from the classical period through its decline in the Enlightenment and Modern eras.
3. Chapter three investigates the resurgence of imitation among theorists such as Homi Babha, Gilles Deleuze, Rene Girard, and Judith Butler.
4. Chapter four returns to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to track the concept of imitation in the period's scientific literature.
5. Chapter five considers how the processes of colonialism, slavery, and Jim Crow shaped the public definition of imitation.
6. Chapter six considers the classical training and rhetoric of black intellectuals who viewed imitation as a form of political and cultural resistance.
7. Chapter seven explores the lives and practices of middle-class black women who sought to establish both autonomy and similarity.
8. Chapter eight looks at the minstrel show as a theatrical expression of repetition and difference.
9. Chapter nine examines the cultural expressions of African American artists in the twentieth century.
10. Chapter ten is a conclusion that offers an alternative history of imitation informed by racial politics.

Of course, in the final analysis this outline will change; nevertheless, it provides a good sense of my interests and the general direction of the project.