Michael L. McGinnis

Michael L. McGinnis is a graduate student in rhetoric and composition at Wayne State University (Detroit, MI).  My research interests encompass a variety of fields within and beyond rhetoric and composition, including critical theory, digital theory, new media, histories of rhetoric and composition, rhetorics of popular culture, cultural studies, protest rhetoric, writing pedagogy, and digital culture.

Please visit my online curriculum vitae at VisualCV for more information.

My proposal, “Performativity and Politics: ‘Coming Out’ as a Rhetorical Stance,” has been accepted for the Rhetoric Society of America’s Graduate Research Network, conducted as part of RSA’s 2010 conference in Minneapolis, MN.

In this proposed article, I seek to consider the rhetorical status of “coming out.” Although deeply embedded within GLBT discourses and politics, “coming out” remains a rhetorically flexible trope that has been adopted by a number of other assumedly “closeted” communities, perhaps most provocatively in the example of the “Conservative Coming Out Day” events that have taken place on several universities. This article would seek to understand what is at stake in the rhetorical stance of “coming out,” both to GLBT discourses and to other discourses which have appropriated it for rhetorical ends.

My presentation, “A Matter of Life and Death Panels: Carl Schmitt’s Anti-Rhetorical Politics,” has been accepted to the 2010 Rhetoric Society of America Conference, to be held in Minneapolis, MN, 28-31 May 2010. The conference theme is “Rhetoric: Concord and Controversy.”

This presentation was submitted as part of the panel “Scandalous!!! Reclaiming Controversy for Rhetorical Scholarship.” My fellow panelists are Kim Lacey, Marylou Naumoff, and Derek Risse, all of Wayne State University.

My presentation, “Invention: The Crowded House of Writing as a Social Process,” has been accepted to the 2010 Conference on College Composition and Communication, to be in Louisville, KY, 17-20 March 2010. The conference theme is “The Remix.”

This presentation was submitted as part of the panel “Dont Call It a Comeback: Remixing the Canons of Rhetoric.” My fellow panelists are Wendy Duprey, Jared Grogan, Mary Karcher, and Kim Lacey, all of Wayne State University.

My presentation, “The End of the Academy: On the Institutional Crisis of the Humanities in the Corporate University,” has been accepted to the 2009 Language and Rhetoric Graduate Conference, to be held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 25-26 September 2009. The conference theme is “Making Meaning: Language and Rhetoric in Real World Spaces.”

This presentation was submitted as part of the panel “‘What Now?’: The Rhetoric of Institutional Crisis.” My fellow panelists are Wendy Duprey and Conor Shaw-Draves, both of Wayne State University.

The Wayne State Department of English has selected me as one of two sponsored participants in the Cornell University School of Criticism and Theory for Summer 2009. My participation in the SCT is made possible through the generous sponsorship of the department; my thanks to the English Department’s graduate committee for selecting me as one of the two students to receive this sponsorship.

I have been assigned to the seminar of Simon During (Prof. of English, Johns Hopkins University), titled “Conservatism, Religion, History.” More information about this seminar and the Cornell School is available here.

I have been awarded one of three 2009-10 Thomas R. Jasina Endowed Scholarships in English by the Wayne State Department of English. The award was presented to me by Dr. Kenneth Jackson, Director of Graduate Studies in English, at the department’s annual awards ceremony on 24 April 2009. My thanks to the faculty and administration of the department for their recognition, and my congratulations to all my fellow award winners.

I have been awarded a Graduate Travel Funding Award by the Wayne State Department of English. The award was granted for my presentation at the 2009 Conference on College Composition and Communication in San Francisco, CA.