Graduate Program Overview

The Rhetoric Department has faculty who specialize in the ancient Mediterranean world and its reception. Drawing on the disciplines of philosophy, literature, aesthetics, history, and religion, our faculty and students pursue topics in ancient Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern cultures and their reception into the present.

The Rhetoric Department supports research on colonialism, postcoloniality, empire, nationalism, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and globalization from the early modern period to the present. Our faculty work on topics such as colonial encounters and scientific practice, colonial law and post-colonial legalities and politics, freedom, decolonization, revolution, the question of the human, transnational human rights, global art and world literature from the disciplinary perspectives of history, literary studies, visual studies, law, and politics. Their research focuses on non-western traditions including the Islamic world, the Ottoman empire, Sinophone East Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa.

Faculty: Pheng Cheah, Samera Esmeir, Fumi Okiji,  Winnie Wong, Sharad Chari (affiliated), Cori Hayden (affiliated)

Our faculty work in diverse areas of study that include gender theory, transnational feminisms (French, Third World, US-of Color), feminist (de)aesthetics, feminist cultural politics, representations of race, gender and sexuality, and the history of sexuality (ancient and modern).

Faculty: Shannon Jackson, Pheng Cheah, Fumi Okiji, Mario Telò, Mel Y. Chen (affiliated).

Several faculty members concentrate on the theoretical and cultural dimensions of images with a particular emphasis on the rhetoric of contemporary arts, media and digital technology. The fields we offer in this area include visual culture, film theory and criticism, film aesthetics, spectatorship, photography, and representations of race, gender and media.

Faculty: Shannon Jackson, Michael Mascuch, Fumi Okiji, Winnie Wong, Mary Anne Doane (affiliated), Anton Kaes (affiliated), Damon Young (affiliated).

The Rhetoric Department supports research and teaching in interdisciplinary approaches to the law and in social and political thought from classical antiquity to contemporary times. Faculty integrate theories and methods from the humanities and the social sciences to approach such issues as justice, language, violence, revolution, personhood, evidence, technology, post-coloniality, nationalism, cosmopolitanism and human rights, in various legal traditions and their histories. They work in canonical political and social theory as well as critiquing it.

Faculty: David Bates, Pheng Cheah, Marianne Constable, Samera Esmeir, Wendy Brown (affiliated), Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman (affiliated)

With faculty working in literary and other discursive traditions that span the ancient, early modern, modern, and contemporary world, Rhetoric supports research that emphasizes textuality, interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, poetics, narratological, and historical and cultural studies. In particular, we support work in fields such as literature and philosophy, law and literature, post-colonial literatures, autobiography, and social and political dimensions of literature.

Faculty: Anthony Cascardi, Pheng Cheah, Marianne Constable, Michael Mascuch, Ramona Naddaff, Fumi Okiji, James Porter, Nasser Zakariya, Judith Butler (affiliated), Donna Jones (affiliated), Colleen Lye (affiliated).

Several of our faculty members have research interests in different aspects of science and technology studies and media theory and practice. Their work and that of their students intersects with fields of study in history and philosophy of science and technology, anthropology of science, law and science, and new media, from the ancient world to the digital age.

Faculty: David Bates, Marianne Constable, Michael Mascuch, Winnie Wong, Nasser Zakariya, Cori Hayden (affiliated).