Jason Hannan
Title: 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 a 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.
Teaching Areas:
- 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
Courses:
Winter 2025
RHET-2143: Rhetoric of Medicine
RHET-3158: Culture Wars
RHET-4900: Honours Thesis
Research Interests:
- Digital Democracy
- Social Media
- Trolling, Disinformation, Conspiracy Theory
- Public Discourse & Communication
- Media & Communication Theory
- Philosophy of Communication
- Rhetoric and Political Theory
- The Culture Wars
- Posthumanism & Critical Animal Studies
Publications:
Books:
- Jason Hannan, Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Oxford University Press, 2023)
- Jason Hannan, Ed. Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial (Sydney University Press, 2020)
- Jason Hannan, Ethics Under Capital: MacIntyre, Communication, and the Culture Wars (Bloomsbury, 2020)
- Jason Hannan, Ed. Truth in the Public Sphere (Lexington Books, 2016)
- Jason Hannan, Ed. Philosophical Profiles in the Theory of Communication. (Peter Lang, 2012)
Dr. Hannan’s current projects include:
Reactionary Rhetoric: The Denial of Reality
This is a SSHRC-funded project that develops a new theory of conservative rhetoric. It frames conservatism as both a politics and a distinct rhetoric. The central claim is that conservative 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.
New White Saviours: The Colonial Politics of Meat
This 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 a 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.
The Routledge Handbook of Communication Ethics. Second Edition, with Amit Pinchevski and Patrice Buzzanell
The second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Communication Ethics brings together an international group of contributors to provide a state-of-the-art account of the field of communication ethics. The volume is divided into three sections: traditions, contexts, and debate. In addition to recruiting a new generation of contributors, the volume explores the implications for communication ethics in a wide range of recent topics, including intersectionality, surveillance, digital activism, the culture wars, gaming, conspiracy theory, and artificial intelligence.