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L. Paul Strait

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)

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Contact Me

College Hall (CH) 208 map

Hattiesburg

Email
L.StraitFREEMississippi

Areas of Expertise

Rhetoric, Discourse, Culture, Medical Humanities, Ideology