Jason Hannan
Title: Associate Professor
Phone: 204.786.9453
Office: 3G20
Building: Graham Hall
Email: j.hannan@uwinnipeg.ca
Degrees:
- Postdoc, Rhetoric & Public Culture, Northwestern University
- PhD, Communication, Carleton University
- MA, Communication, Carleton University
- B.Sc., Information Systems, Northeastern University
Biography:
Dr. Jason Hannan is Associate Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg. He completed his PhD in Communication at Carleton University. From 2010-2012, he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program in Rhetoric and Public Culture at Northwestern University. He was also a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. He taught at Northwestern University before joining the University of Winnipeg in 2013.
Dr. Hannan’s current projects include:
Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (under contract with Oxford University Press).
This book project synthesizes the insights of Alasdair MacIntyre and Neil Postman to provide a structural understanding of trolling and its corrosive impact upon the public sphere. It examines the historical conditions that made trolling possible and examines conservative and liberal variations of the political troll in modern democracies. The central thesis of the book is that the troll has emerged from the cave, so to speak, and now walks in the clear light of day.
New White Saviours: The Colonial Politics of Meat
This book project examines the colonial narratives, fantasies, and politics of livestock farming in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. It is premised on the history of livestock farming as form of settler colonialism. It interrogates how livestock farming has both devastated the natural environment, yet been rebranded as the solution to our ecological crisis through “regenerative” grazing.
Reactionary Rhetoric: The Denial of Reality
This book project provides a brief history of conservative rhetoric. It frames conservatism as both a politics and a distinct rhetoric. The central claim is that conservatism as rhetoric entails the denial of reality. The book uses several case studies to explore how this denialism operates. It looks at conservative reactions to the women’s movement, the abolition movement, the Civil Rights movement, the LGBTQ movement, and the animal liberation movement.
Awards
(2016) Top Article Award, Philosophy of Communication Division, National Communication Association, for “Moral Discourse Without Foundations: Habermas and MacIntyre on Rational Choice”
(2014) Top Article Award, Philosophy of Communication Division, National Communication Association, for “Alasdair MacIntyre’s Contribution to Communication Theory”
(2010) Carleton University Senate Medal for Outstanding Work at the Doctoral Level
(2007) Van Horne Prize, Canadian Communication Association, for: “The Intellectual Legacy of George Herbert Mead”
Courses:
- RHET-1120 Introduction to Rhetoric & Communications
- RHET-2135 Rhetorical Criticism
- RHET-2137 Communication Theory
- RHET-2142 Rhetoric of Animality
- RHET-2143 Rhetoric of Medicine
- RHET-3138 Modern Rhetorical Theory
- RHET-4401 Rhetoric of the Public Sphere
Research Interests:
- Media & Communication Theory
- Philosophy of Communication
- Democracy and Public Communication
- Rhetoric and Political Theory
- Moral Conflict and Disagreement
- The Culture Wars
- Social Media and Trolling
- Posthumanism & Critical Animal Studies
- Bioethics & Medical Humanities
Publications:
Books
Hannan, Jason. Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (under contract with Oxford University Press).
Hannan, Jason, Ed. Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2020.
Hannan, Jason. Ethics Under Capital: MacIntyre, Communication, and the Culture Wars. London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2020.
Hannan, Jason, Ed. Truth in the Public Sphere. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016.
Hannan, Jason, Ed. Philosophical Profiles in the Theory of Communication. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012.