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Ira J. Allen, PhD

Rhetoric, Politics, Writing
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Rhetorical and Political Theorist, Translator, Writing Specialist

This page offers a view of how my different projects fit together, and explains each project in a bit more detail.

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Forthcoming and Recent

"Climate Anxiety and Topophilia, or, Loving with Fire," Local Philosophy.

* "A Non-Defensive Gun: Climate Change, Violence, and Rhetorical Education," Rhetoric and Guns.

* "Rhetorical Witnessing and Unconcluded War: For Becoming-in-Loss," Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 11(1/2).

* "Rhetorical Witnessing in Global Contexts," Rhetoric Review 39(4).

* "Beginning Again: Jericho, Revolution, and Catastrophic Originalism," Representations of Political Resistance and Emancipation in Science Fiction.

* "Interchange: Cooper and Allen on Allen's 'Composition Is the Ethical Negotiation of Fantastical Selves," CCC 71(3).

* "Negotiating Ubiquitous Surveillance," Screen Bodies 4(2).

* "Composition Is the Ethical Negotiation of Fantastical Selves," CCC 70(2).

* The Ethical Fantasy of Rhetorical Theory, University of Pittsburgh Press.

* "Falling Apart Together: On Viewing Ali Atassi's Our Terrible Country from Beirut," Screen Bodies.

"Jean-Luc Nancy: Community, Freedom, Unworking," An Encyclopedia of Communication Ethics.

* "Who Owns Donald Trump's Antisemitism," Faking the News.

* "Donald Trump’s Antisemitism—And Ours," enculturation 26(February 2018).

* "God Terms and Activity Systems: A Definition of Religion for Political Science," Political Research Quarterly.

* "The Hegelian Spirit of Jamesian Truth: A New Old Realism," New Perspectives on Realism.

* "Symposium: Barack Obama’s Significance for Rhetoric and Composition," CCC 67(3).

* "Troubled Freedom, Rhetorical Personhood, and Democracy’s Ongoing Constitution," Advances in the History of Rhetoric 18(2).

* "Dialectical and Comic Reflections: On Translating Benjamin’s Radio Work," Theory & Event 18(3).

* "Rhetorical Humanism vs. Object-Oriented Ontology: The Ethics of Archimedean Points and Levers," SubStance 43(3).

Teaching

I’ve been teaching rhetoric, politics, writing, cultural studies, and literature at the university level since 2005. At Indiana University and the University of Stuttgart, as in my current position as assistant professor at Northern Arizona University and, before that, at the American University of Beirut, I help students to articulate and achieve critical writing goals, to understand disciplinary conventions and boundaries, and to invent themselves as ever more responsible, ethically self-conscious subjects, better capable of doing more good in the world.

Whether teaching Rhetoric and Democracy or Religiosity in American Life, Argument in Digital Contexts or History and Theory of Rhetoric, my aim is to help students grow along lines of their own choosing, articulated in conscious negotiation of actually existing disciplinary formations. Ultimately, rhetorical theory’s goal is for us all to become better–more ethical and more effective–negotiators of constraint.

Studying rhetoric helps students develop wonderful capacities for being effective in the world and at the same time for being critical of the world. Rhetorical study improves our abilities to negotiate symbolic environments with an eye for what may be useful, personally and communally both, and with a sense of ethical responsibility. I love helping students build up these rhetorical capabilities and, equally, love helping teachers think carefully about how—and why—to foster these capabilities in their own students. My primary teaching aims are to help my students decide how rhetoric can be useful for them personally and to work closely together to deepen their rhetorical skills and strengths

Research

My research agenda drives along several primary roads, out from a central array of rhetorical insights. Throughout, I work to understand how symbolic animals persuasively negotiate constraints, and how we might do so better in a variety of arenas.

This cashes out in seven major projects:

(1) The Ethical Fantasy of Rhetorical Theory, a book about what rhetorical theory is and is for;

(2) “Rhetorical Constitution: Democracy’s Possibilities,” a book-length argument for writing constitutions in attunement to the rhetorical gradients through which citizens and democracies alike emerge;

(3) “Troubled Freedom: Five Easy Pieces,” a book-length investigation of (troubled) freedom as an enduring philosophical and social question;

(4) “Defining Religion Rhetorically,” a book-length consideration of how social scientists and lay people can best understand religion in the United States, stemming from a rhetorical definition of the term and examined in comparative context;

(5) “The Children’s Guest: Multimodal Translations of Walter Benjamin,” a series of translations of Walter Benjamin’s radio shows for children as digitally hosted multimodal compositions, working rhetorically to negotiate the lost medial force of the radio;

(6) “Rhetoric, Witness, Loss,” a short book on the rhetorical dimensions of witnessing, with case studies from contemporary Lebanon; and

(7) “Being Impermissible,” a book-length study of what it is and means to be a symbolic animal moralized by the negative, to be a being that is, in its being, not permitted to be.

Naturally, I follow some secondary roads as well.

Service

As an institutional citizen, I see my job as being to understand how things work, how they can work better, and how they maybe can’t work better. This means listening carefully and asking systematic questions about both institutional logics and rhetorical ecologies, how the university (and the discipline and the larger world) works and how changes may be symbolically and collaboratively induced or discovered. Equally, it means putting my shoulder to the wheel.

I’ve been fortunate in effecting some changes along the way: for instance, founding a community writing center in Indiana (the Bloomington Writing Project), collaborating to establish an MA in Rhetoric and Composition at the American University of Beirut, and building bridges between the American University of Beirut Writing Center and organizations serving Syrian refugees in Lebanon. At present, I am a core member of the MA in Rhetoric, Writing, and Digital Media Studies at Northern Arizona University, where I also serve on the Faculty Senate.

By listening to others, I work to understand local rhetorical ecologies. By working with others, I aim to invent better futures.

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