Research
Most of my research hovers around issues pertaining to neurodivergence, trans experience, queerness, and rhetoric. When I'm lucky, all four pop up together! I am a rhetorician by training, though I am invested in critical theory and cultural studies more broadly. I have written on a variety of cultural phenomena from the dating app Grindr to the ex-gay movement. My book project, in a nutshell, theorizes how silence and forms of rhetorical/signifying absence are used by queer people toward resistant, productive and empowering ends. You can learn more about my work and publications by checking out my curriculum vitae.
Teaching
Perhaps unsurprisingly, my teaching is closely related to my research. I not only have a passion for leading queer-, trans-, and disability- themed courses, but I am careful to mold my pedagogy in all my classes--from first-year composition to graduate-level seminars--around the insights offered by (neuro)queer, trans, and crip educators. These insights have had innumerable effects on my teaching, but among the most important to me are
- an insistence on intersectional syllabi that highlight minoritarian voices,
- an inclusive and accessible class/classroom that welcomes the participation of a diverse array of bodyminds,
- and an acknowledgment that not every student will come away from a course having learned the same things as their peers, that it is my job as the instructor to celebrate learning as a personal journey, even if that journey is structured by the social/cultural/material dimensions of the class.
Image Description: Headshot of John grinning in their apartment with one fist perched under their chin. They are wearing a sky blue top and a gold cross earring.
