Joshua Hanan

Professor Hanan studies rhetoric from the critical standpoints of historical materialism, cultural materialism, and new materialism. In particular, his work explores how historically shifting ecological, technological, and economic contexts produce and regulate what can and cannot be conceptualized as communicative and rhetorical activity. By adopting this "materialist" lens, Dr. Hanan's work has offered new ways to understand many salient 21st-century discourses, including the 2008 financial crisis, attention deficit disorder, home ownership, WikiLeaks, Freakonomics, environmental stewardship, the commons, and quantum physics.

Dr. Hanan's 40 + publications can be found in many journals, both inside and outside the discipline of communication studies, including Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Philosophy & Rhetoric, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Argumentation & Advocacy, Angelaki, and Cultural Critique.

In addition to his research, Dr. Hanan has served in numerous leadership and editorial roles. For example, Dr. Hanan has served as the vice-chair and chair of a new NCA Division that he helped found called Economics, Communication, and Society, and, in 2014, he published (with Mark Hayward) the first edited collection to explore the topic of economics in the discipline of communication studies. He has also edited a special issue of Cultural Economy (with Catherine Chaput) that examines the intersections between rhetoric, economic performativity, and neoliberalism and an edited book (with Christopher Gamble) that engages the burgeoning "new materialist" conversation in the discipline of rhetorical studies. Dr. Hanan is working on a third edited book (with Catherine Chaput) titled Rhetoric as Nature.

Professor Hanan's interdisciplinary teaching interests include rhetorical theory, critical theory, cultural studies, rhetorical materialism, the rhetoric of science and technology, the rhetoric of economics, and disability rhetoric.