S8E3: Rhetoric and Supremacy with Lauren Corman, David Rooney, and S. Marek Muller

Lauren Corman is an environmental sociologist who teaches in the areas of environmental thought, contemporary social theory, and critical animal studies. Her research centralizes anti-racist, anti-colonial, queer, and feminist understandings of social relations and the more-than-human world. Dr. Corman is interested in coalition-building across social and environmental justice movements and links their work to larger anti-capitalist analyses and struggles.

David Rooney is currently an Associate Professor of Practice and Director of Debate at the University of Wyoming. At the time of recording David was a doctoral student at the Moody School of Communication, University of Texas-Austin focusing on Rhetoric, Language and Political Communication. Their research intersects environmental communication, animal studies, critical/cultural studies and digital rhetoric. In particular, some recent works examine how hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality are reproduced through Western norms of appropriate human-animal, and, by extension, human-nature relations.

S. Marek Muller is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Texas State University. They received their PhD in Communication from the University of Utah and previously worked at Florida Atlantic University, Ball State University, and the Institute of Engineering & Technology in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Dr. Muller's research is at the intersection of rhetorical studies, environmental communication, and critical animal studies. Specifically, they are interested in the humanity-animality dialectic and how human supremacy manifests in inter- and cross-species communication conflicts. Dr. Muller's first book, Impersonating Animals: Rhetoric, Ecofeminism, and Animal Rights Law, was published by the Michigan State University Press in 2020. Their current research projects involve the intersections of "alternative" food movements and U.S. political rhetoric, especially as manifested by recent turns to carnivore diets by the so-called "alt-right."