My Research Agenda
My research in rhetoric and media studies deals with issues of citizenship via a focus on political affect, controversy, aesthetics, public memory, and trauma. In addition to my dissertation, over the past two years, my research has focused on affect-based aspects of citizenship within spaces of memory and film. In my article, “(Re)thinking the Memorial as a Place of Aesthetic Negotiation,” I examined both the cognitive and affective efficacy of the Columbine Memorial at Clement Park in Littleton, CO. Here, the dual hermeneutic of public memorials and affect allowed me to conceptualize aesthetic negotiation as a form of embodied reasoning during which individuals assess the political significance of their immediate sensate experiences of past events within wider socio-cultural contexts. In the book chapter, “The Many Moods of Michael Moore: Aesthetics and Affect in Bowling for Columbine,” Dr. Brian L. Ott and I analyze Moore’s creation and implementation of cinematic moods through aesthetic, discursive and structural elements. Focusing on the connection between cinematic mood and cultural trauma, we analyzed Bowling for Columbine as a mediated experience that helps spectators work through the collective grief of Columbine and other school shootings. The findings of these combined projects will be applied to my future research agenda.
There are two broad themes that I intend to build upon in my long-term research agenda: 1) affective citizenship and social justice, as well as 2) issues of risk, vulnerability, and national insecurity. First, the findings of my dissertation and previous projects suggest that there is a significant connection between affect and citizenship. For instance, analyzing the affective dimensions of social controversy reveals how these conflicts help establish the collective parameters of citizen conduct by establishing specific affects, feelings, and emotions that a ‘good’ citizen should feel and act upon within given situations. I plan on continuing this line of inquiry by analyzing specific mediated representations of US cultural traumas to further analyze the ethical-affective dimensions of U.S. citizenship. Currently, I am beginning a project examining the social controversy surrounding the creation of Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a first-person shooter videogame that allows players to virtually embody avatars of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Second, I am interested in researching the ways that the specific affective states of fear, risk, and vulnerability have been politically mobilized as a means to rationalize and justify the oppressive use of governmental power with the explicit consent of the large portions of the public. My work will theorize how these affective logics underwrite a form of governing power based upon insecurity.
There are two broad themes that I intend to build upon in my long-term research agenda: 1) affective citizenship and social justice, as well as 2) issues of risk, vulnerability, and national insecurity. First, the findings of my dissertation and previous projects suggest that there is a significant connection between affect and citizenship. For instance, analyzing the affective dimensions of social controversy reveals how these conflicts help establish the collective parameters of citizen conduct by establishing specific affects, feelings, and emotions that a ‘good’ citizen should feel and act upon within given situations. I plan on continuing this line of inquiry by analyzing specific mediated representations of US cultural traumas to further analyze the ethical-affective dimensions of U.S. citizenship. Currently, I am beginning a project examining the social controversy surrounding the creation of Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a first-person shooter videogame that allows players to virtually embody avatars of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Second, I am interested in researching the ways that the specific affective states of fear, risk, and vulnerability have been politically mobilized as a means to rationalize and justify the oppressive use of governmental power with the explicit consent of the large portions of the public. My work will theorize how these affective logics underwrite a form of governing power based upon insecurity.