University of Memphis

Faculty Member, Communication

Asst. Professor

About

I joined the communication department at the U of M in 2009, after three years as an assistant professor at Old Dominion University. My research ties together my graduate training in rhetoric and cognitive psychology within the field of discourse studies. Most of my research focuses on how discourse of and about science is used and understood in the context of social and political controversies—including stem cell research, gender and cognition, and “reparative therapy” for homosexuality—and articles based on this research appear in the journals Communication Theory, Discourse & Society, Science Communication, and Western Journal of Communication, as well as the edited volume Rhetoric in Detail: Discourse Analyses of Rhetorical Talk & Text (Benjamins). Recently, I have also carried out research on news media representations of “illegal immigrants” and on how irony functions within satirical media discourse. I use both qualitative and quantitative methods in my research and take a broadly social cognitive perspective on discourse and communication.
I frequently teach Communication Research Methods at the undergraduate level as well as a variety of graduate courses. 

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