Participant Info

First Name
Jennifer
Last Name
Mercieca
Country
United States
State
TX Texas
Affiliation
Texas A&M University
Website URL
http://www.jennifermercieca.com/
Keywords
speeches, demagoguery, citizens, democracy, republicanism, Founders, American Revolution, Constitution Era, Jacksonian democracy
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Dr. Jennifer Mercieca is an historian of American political rhetoric. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University, Founding Director of the Aggie Agora, Immediate Past Chair of the Public Address Division of the National Communication Association, founding editor of Citizen Critics, and creator of the #teamrhetoric hashtag on Twitter.

She writes about American political discourse, especially as it relates to citizenship, democracy, and the presidency. Jennifer has published two books about political rhetoric: Founding Fictions (University of Alabama Press, 2010) and The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency (Texas A&M University Press, 2014). She is finishing a third book about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and demagoguery. She has written about Trump’s rhetoric for USA Today, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, and other major media outlets. She has also been interviewed about Trump’s rhetoric by the BBC World News, NPR’s All Things Considered, The New York Times, Australia’s ABC Radio, Slate, and many other outlets throughout the United States and Worldwide. Her articles about rhetoric, Trump, and the 2016 election were read over 250,000 times during the election. In 2016 she was invited to deliver a TedX Talk: “Be a Citizen, Not a Partisan.”

She is a 2016 recipient of the Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching, the highest award given to faculty for teaching at Texas A&M University.

Recent Publications

Jennifer R. Mercieca, “Afterword : Trump as Anarchist and Sun King,” Faking the NewsWhat Rhetoric Can Teach Us About Donald J. Trump (Societas, 2018).

Jennifer Mercieca, “A Reflection on the Obama Phenomenon, Our Heroic Expectations, and the Obama Presidency,” Reconsidering Obama: Reflections on Rhetoric, Robert E. Terrill, Ed, (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2017): 153-169.

Jennifer Mercieca, “Ignoring the President: Barack Obama’s Post-Rhetorical Presidency,” From Columns to Characters: The Presidency and the Press in the Digital Age, Stephanie Ann Martin, Ed, (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2017): 206-231.

Jennifer R Mercieca, “The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship,”

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2015.

 

Media Coverage
in my bio above, but NYT, WaPo, CNN, NPR, The Conversation, USAToday, etc.
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
Ancient, 18th century, 19th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
American Revolution, American Founding Era, American Presidents, Government, Politics