Dr. L. Paul Strait
Associate Professor
Bio
I am a rhetorician (primarily of science) and am interested in questions of applied epistemology-- that is, how and why do people come to believe strange, incorrect, and/or dangerous things? What systematic factors drive error production, and how is the public seduced by that error?
I also am the Director of Forensics. The USM Speech & Debate team competes in public debate, parliamentary debate, individual events (limited preparation speaking, public address, and oral interpretation of literature).
- Rhetoric, Politics & Publics; Media, Culture & Community (PHD) - University of Southern California (2014)
- MA - George Mason University (2006)
- BA - Catholic University of America (2003)
- A temporally local theory of polarizing argumentative style, Local theories of argument, 2021
- General and local theories of argument in late modernity, Local theories of argument,
- Scientific argument networks and the polytechtonic art of rhetoric, Networking Argument, 2020
- Inventing suburbia: Spatialized constitutive rhetoric in Richard Nixon’s suburban strategy, City places, country spaces: Rhetorical explorations of the urban/rural divide, 2020, 10.3726/b16337
- The role of decision-making agency in distinguishing legitimate and fallacious slippery slope arguments , Proceedings of the Ninth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation , 2019
- Counter-Strike or counterpublic? Audience creation, transnational discourses, and the rhetorical legitimation of Esports in TBS’s ELEAGUE, Understanding Esports: An introduction to the global phenomenon, 2019
- Recovering from pathological argumentation: A theory of argument systems and intersubjective psychosis, Recovering Argument, 2018
- Antidepressants and iatrogenic suicidality: Disturbing arguments in the politics of the supplement, Disturbing argument, 2015
- Rational argumentation and social change in the Frankfurt School tradition, Reasoned argument and social change: Selected works from the 17th NCA/AFA Alta conference on argumentation, 2011
- Academic debate as a decision-making game: Inculcating the virtue of practical wisdom, Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, 2008
- English (Native or Bilingual)
- Latin (Professional Working)
- Greek (Professional Working)
- Italian (Elementary)