I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice at St. Francis College.
My work primarily focuses on (1) the ways that mass media, information technology, and political rhetoric reinforce normative power structures while shaping collective understandings of criminal and deviant identity, inequality, and social control, and (2) capital punishment.
Check out my Amazon author page and Google Scholar profile
More information about my work can be found at Academia and ResearchGate
I also have a Goodreads author page
It's Not a Lie if You Believe It: Donald Trumps Gonzo Expertise as Dramaturgical Performance
The American Sociologist (2024)
This study introduces the concept of gonzo expertise to contextualize the rhetorical techniques used by Donald Trump to frame himself as a credible expert on any topic regardless of his intellectual interest or actual knowledge of those matters. Using a sample of 57 interview and public event transcripts, four rhetorical framing techniques are identified that validate Trump’s problem-solving expertise and authenticate himself as the primary definer of what is real and represents truth for millions of Americans, while simultaneously casting doubt on social reality by attacking facts and delegitimizing the social actors and institutions that confer status and legitimacy on traditional experts who validate those facts. First, Trump establishes hyper-masculine dominance over factual reality. Second, he directs focus away from rationality and logic by appealing to emotion, outrage, and fear. Third, Trump uses populist savior imagery to foster cohesion, trust, and compliance among supporters. Finally, Trump articulates an us-versus-them worldview that frames his truth as a moral imperative that must be believed without equivocation.
The SoJo Journal: Educational Foundations and Social Justice Education (2023)
This study examines The Chicago Defender in order to contextualize how lynching an legal forms of courtroom punishment were reported in the Black Press during the first half of the 20th century. Using a data sample of 198 articles published between 1905-1940, we employ a biopower analysis to identify narratives chronicling the decline of vigilante public lynching while forewarning the harms of legal "lynching" via courtroom trials that protected State racism in a more covert and legally accepted manner. Our findings indicate that the Defender not only described how the terror of lynching was the biopolitics of the Reconstruction era and the early twentieth century, but also the necropolitical cultural transition toward mass incarceration and state-sanctioned executions to control and subjugate Black populations.
