4000 University Drive
McKeesport, PA 15132
Biography
Communication theorist interested in rhetoric, communicative ethics, and human rights
Research Interests
Communicative ethics, human rights, phenomenological hermeneutics, rhetorical theory
Publications
Speaking in Silence: Rhetoric, Ranciere, and the Blank Sign Protests of 2022 - January, 2025
Communication Theory at the Crossroads - January, 2025
Collaborators: Stanley Deetz; Gary Radford
Haunting Dreams: Time and Affect in the Neoliberal Commemoration of "I Have a Dream" - September, 2018
Being Confined: Time, Space, and Intersubjectivity in Long-Term Solitary Confinement - 2016
A Dark side of communication: Solitary confinement - September 21, 2016
Collaborators: Margaret Signorella, Co-Author; Array Array
Mental Health and Gun Law - September 6, 2016
Deconstitutive Rhetoric: The Destruction of Legal Personhood in the Global War on Terrorism - July 29, 2016
Hunger for Voice: Hunger for Voice: Transformative Argumentation in the 2005 Guantánamo Bay Hunger Strike, Argumentation and Advocacy - December 2, 2015
Guns, Crime, and Dangerous Minds: Assessing the Mental Health turn in Gun Policy Discourse, Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies - August, 2015
Collaborator: David Seitz, Co-Author
Prisoners of Conscience, Mediatropes - May, 2015
Collaborator: Barbara Biesecker
Exposure, Negative, Proof: Hysteria in the Lens of 19th century Medical Photography, Proteus: A journal of ideas - October, 2014
Digital Disclosure, Decision-making, and Democracy, Teaching Media Quarterly - December, 2013
A Liberal Use of Torture: Pain, Personhood, and Precedent in the U.S. Federal Definition of Torture, Rhetoric & Public Affairs - November, 2011
Education
Ph D, Communication, University of Pittsburgh
MA, Communication, University of Colorado (Boulder)
BA, Communication, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
BA, English, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Papers and Presentations
November, 2024
Panels
Ranciere and the Rhetorical
National Communication Association Convention
New Orleans, LA, USA
2023
Panels
Ranciere and the Rhetorical: Enacting equality in the Neurodiversity Paradigm
Communication Ethics Conference
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
November, 2021
Panels
Teaching communication ethics
National Communication Association Convention
Seattle, WA
November 18, 2021
Panels
Ranciere and the Rhetorical: The politics of neurodiversity
National Communication Association Conve
Seattle, WA
May, 2016
Papers
Imprisoned Speech: The State of Civic Discourse for American Prisoners
Rhetoric Society of America Conference
Atlanta, GA
In “Imprisoned Speech: The State of Civic Discourse for American Prisoners,” Michael Vicaro and Jennifer K. Wood analyze a law recently enacted in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania which grants crime victims the right “to bring civil action against an offender…to obtain…relief…for conduct which perpetuates the continuing effect of the crime on the victim.” Referred to as “The Silencing Act” by the law’s critics, it is one of a wide array of legal techniques designed to limit inmates’ and formerly incarcerated person's abilities to access civic forums (e.g. disenfranchisement, prohibitions on serving on juries, and employment restrictions). This analysis argues that scholars of rhetoric should work to better understand prohibitions on speech imposed on those occupying imprisoned subject-positions. In an era of mass incarceration, in which the number of incarcerated Americans is greater than the populations of all but three U.S. cities, it is especially urgent that we examine the state of civic discourse in the fourth largest city in America.
May, 2016
Papers
Memoranda as Weapons of War: Deconstituting Legal Subjectivity in the "Enemy Combatant" memos
Rhetoric Society of America Conference
Atlanta, GA
May, 2016
Papers
Rendition and Redaction: Guantanamo Diary as Wrongful Confinement Memoir
Rhetoric Society of America Conference
Atlanta, GA
This presentation explores a twenty-first century narrative of wrongful involuntary institutional confinement, Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantanamo Diary, the first book written by a detainee still imprisoned at the notorious U.S. military detention site. The presentation reads Slahi’s text in concert with several nineteenth-century accounts of wrongful confinement in psychiatric asylums in order to illuminate some of the parallel affective-political tropes used in constructions of both the Victorian identity position of the “lunatic” and the twenty-first century “enemy combatant terrorist.” I develop a rhetorically informed critique of these wrongful confinement accounts, focusing on the use of a set of commonplace tactics shared by the nineteenth and twenty-first century testimonial writers: the attempt to generate sentimental identification, an invitation to vicarious textual witnessing in otherwise inaccessible places, the cultivation of counter-narrative vocabularies to challenge the technical discourse of the medical-institutional authorities, and the attempt to not just to assert but textually display/perform innocence and sanity. The paper also attends to some non-traditional elements of the Guantanamo Diary, as well, including the editor’s decision to include hundreds of black bar redaction lines imposed by military censors—a unique and strikingly effective visual lacuna.
November, 2014
Papers
Arguing in and out of Solitary Confinement: The Pelican Bay Hungerstrike
National Communication Association Convention
Chicago, IL
This paper examines the political speech of a group of inmates held in solitary confinement at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. The group, known as the Short Corridor Collective, organized a widespread hunger strike and published an "Agreement to End Hostilities," which called for an end to race-based intra-penitentiary violence. Since solitary confinement suppresses the interpersonal communication normally required for deliberation, the emergence of collective action from within “supermax” prison is theoretically and politically significant. Drawing on prisoners’ accounts of the deliberative process, this paper explores the challenges faced by prisoners seeking forums for argumentation in conditions of communicative deprivation.
September, 2014
Presentations
Teaching Rhetorical theory and criticism
Pennsylvania Communication Association Convention
Pittsburgh, PA
June 4, 2014
Papers
Music in the Rain: Torture and Communicative Ethics
National Communicative Ethics Convention
Pittsburgh, PA
May, 2014
Oral Presentations
Super Session: Celebrating RSA Book of the Year
Rhetoric Society of America Conference
San Antonio, TX
April 25, 2013
Papers and Oral Presentations
Body as Voice: Hunger Striking and the Hermeneutics of Listening
Eastern States Communication Association
Pittsburgh, PA
Examines hunger striking as "radical" rhetoric and proposes a theory of listening, informed by the tradition of hermeneutics, that accounts for the strike's rhetorical effect.
January 24, 2013
Lectures
Starved for Speech: Hunger Striking from Northern Ireland to Guantanamo Bay
Teaching International Lecture Series
McKeesport, PA
Analysis of hunger striking as political speech with a focus on the similarities and differences between 1980 N.Ireland and 2005 GTMO hungerstrikes.
December 6, 2012
Visiting Presentations in Classes
The Prison Toilet as a Site of Political Speech
November 15, 2012
Presentations
Shit Speaks: Prison Toilets as Sites of Resistance
World Toilet Day
McKeesport, PA
Toilets have become sites of resistance and response in US domestic prisons; used as media for various kinds of communication.