James Rushing Daniel , PhD
Assistant Professor of English and Director of Basic Writing and Assessment
Department of English
(973) 671-9000
Email
Fahy Hall
Room 359
James Rushing Daniel, PhD
Assistant Professor of English and Director of Basic Writing and Assessment
Department of English
My scholarship sits at the intersection of rhetorical theory, composition studies, and critical university studies. My central interest is the operation of capitalist argumentation in 21st century contexts. In rhetorical theory, I explore the discourse of billionaires, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and the political class, seeking to understand how these figures rationalize growing wealth inequality and the disappearance of public goods. In composition studies, I consider how the writing classroom can valuably explore issues of precarity, economic inequality, and workers’ rights.
My current book project, Struggling Upward: How Entrepreneurialism Captured the American University (under advance contract at Johns Hopkins University Press), charts how entrepreneurship has become an ascendent force in American higher education and how it has undermined the educational project of the university. The book traces how entrepreneurial education evolved from an obscure subfield within a few elite business schools to become the global hegemon it is today. Noting the intellectual poverty of entrepreneurial education and the malign effects of higher education’s entrepreneurial culture, the book details how unionization and faculty resistance can challenge the corporatization of the university.
I am also the author of Toward an Anti-Capitalist Composition (Utah State University Press, 2022), a text that challenges the field of composition to come to terms with capitalism’s devastating effects and that articulates a model of composition pedagogy framing writing as a critical, collaborative, and political praxis. Employing this model of writing, the book addresses how issues such as worker productivity, student debt, and the technology industry may be productively taken up in the composition classroom. I am additionally the lead editor of Writing across Difference: Theory and Intervention (Utah State University Press, 2022), a collection that explores how inclusive and pluralistic approaches to composition teaching can support the bridging of racial, linguistic, and class divides in the writing classroom and in institutional contexts.
My research has also been published in numerous journals, including Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College English, Philosophy & Rhetoric, College Composition and Communication, Composition Studies, Enculturation: A Journal of Writing Rhetoric and Culture, and Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society.
Education
- Ph.D., University of Wisconsin–Madison
- M.A., Carnegie Mellon University
- B.A., New York University
Accomplishments
Books
- Struggling Upward: How Entrepreneurialism Captured the American University. Under advance contract at Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Toward an Anti-Capitalist Composition. Utah State University Press, 2022.
- Daniel, James Rushing, Katie Malcolm, and Candice Rai, eds. Writing across Difference: Theory and Intervention. Utah State University Press, 2022.
Journal Articles
- “Rewriting the plan of the world: Peter Thiel’s messianic rhetoric and the end of progressive neoliberalism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, advance online publication, April 2024.
- “‘It’s Like a Fairytale, Really’: Capitalist Fantasy, Postplanetary Rhetoric, and the New Space Race.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 4, 2023, pp. 522.537.
- “Break Stuff: Negation, Totality, and the Project of Rhetorical Theory.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. March 2022 [9,378 words]
- “Burning Out: Writing and the Self in the Era of Terminal Productivity.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, no. 30, 2020 [8,301 words]
- “‘A Debt is Just the Perversion of a Promise’: Composition and the Student Loan.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 70, no. 2, 2018, pp. 195-221.
- “Freshman Composition as a Precariat Enterprise.” College English, vol. 80, no. 1, September 2017, pp. 63-85.
- “Everybody Will be Hip and Rich: Neoliberal Discourse in Silicon Valley.” Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, vol. 6, no. 2, 2017 [2,986 words]
- “The Event that We Are: Ontology, Rhetorical Agency, and Alain Badiou.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 49, no. 3, 2016, pp. 254-276.
Short Articles and Reviews
- Review of Rhetoric in Debt by Kellie Sharp-Haskins. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 200-203.
- “Crisis at the HBCU.” Composition Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, 2016, pp. 158-161.
Chapters
- “‘Gathering Dust in the Dark’: Inequality and the Limits of Composition.” In Writing across Difference: Theory and Intervention, edited by James Rushing Daniel, Katie Malcolm, and Candice Rai, 2022, pp. 39-55.
- “Dreamlandic Fantasy: Consumerism and Control in Bragi Ólafsson’s The Pets.” Fear and Fantasy in a Global World. Eds. Susana Araújo, Marta Pacheco Pinto, and Sandra Bettencourt. Amsterdam and New York: Brill | Rodopi, 2015, pp. 35-53.
Essays
- “The Ever-More Corporate University.” Chronicle of Higher Education. November 6, 2023.
- “Capitalism Makes Everyone Bend to Its Will, Rich and Poor Alike.” An interview with Søren Mau. Jacobin. February 26, 2023.
- “The Cruelty of Faculty Churn.” Chronicle of Higher Education. November 3, 2022.
- “Higher Ed’s Cult of Growth.” Chronicle of Higher Education. August 5, 2022.
- “The Commodification of Jean-Michel Basquiat.” Jacobin. May 23, 2022.
- “Dry Capitalism.” Damage. February 16, 2022.
- “Art and Capital Have Become Nearly Indistinguishable.” Jacobin. November 15, 2021.
- “Austin is Ground Zero for a Different Kind of Neoliberalism.” Jacobin. October 4, 2021.