José Ángel Maldonado
Assistant Professor
CONTACT
Office: CPR 301-M
Phone: 813-974-5165
Email
BIO
I’m an Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Florida, specializing in Rhetorical Theory, Critical and Cultural Studies, Film and Television Criticism, Contemporary Mexican Culture, Gender Studies, Border Studies, Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Indigeneity. My research on race and gender, thanatourism, and human migration and mobility appears in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Southern Communication Journal, and Javnost-The Public: Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture. I received a PhD in Communication from the University of Utah. My doctoral dissertation, Diana’s Confession: Precarious Rhetoric in Post-NAFTA Mexico, won the 2018 Rhetoric Society of America Dissertation Award.
My current book project, Retórica Moribunda: Quotidian Death and the Haunt of Diana, under contract with Vanderbilt University Press’s series in Critical Mexican Studies, attends to quotidian death as understood through a rhetorical lens. Retórica Moribunda focuses on extreme depictions of the morbid and the macabre in everyday life: in for-TV movies, public transportation, and online news, for example. I argue that the morbidity of discourse creates a new relationship to lived violence and reifies the power of the modern, democratic, capitalist state. I use the unique case of Diana the Hunter of Bus Drivers in order to uncover and explain the details of this rhetorical-ideological process.
PROSPECTIVE BA STUDENTS
While at USF, I have taught Rhetoric of Marginalized Communities (ENC 3373) and Expository Writing (ENC 3310). In the past, I have taught courses in Rhetorical Criticism, Film Studies and Criticism, Border Rhetorics, Visual Rhetoric, Rhetoric of Popular Culture, and Writing for New Media, among others.
PROSPECTIVE MA STUDENTS
I’m affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean. Students seeking a Master of Arts in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (MALACS, not housed in English), may receive credit for taking some of my graduate courses. In the Spring of 2021, MALACS students may take my Special Topics Graduate course, Rhetoric and Hauntology (LIT 6934), and receive credit toward their degree. Please speak with the director of MALACS and/or ISLAC to ensure you receive credit.
PROSPECTIVE PHD STUDENTS
I teach doctoral courses in Rhetorical Theory, Hauntology, Latin American Rhetoric, and Rhetoric and Cultural Studies. Although I have worked with students interested in various topics, I am particularly interested in research regarding Rhetorical Theory and Criticism, Critical and Cultural Studies, Latin American Rhetorical Studies, and Film and Television Studies. Projects involving globalization, transnationalism, multilingualism, and translation are of particular interest to me. I currently serve on several external PhD committees in the areas of Rhetorical Studies, Cultural Studies, and Latin American Literature.