Hello, and welcome! I'm a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. I'm interested in and publish in the areas of writing theory and pedagogy, material rhetorics, environmental rhetorics, methods and methodology, and rhetorics of location and place. 

My most recent monograph, Nestwork: New Material Rhetorics for Precarious Species (2023) examines infrastructural entanglements of humans and nonhumans as material rhetorical arguments, focusing on the Species at Risk Act and mandated recovery strategies for listed species. Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics, co-edited with David Grant, brings together emerging and established voices at the nexus of new materialist and decolonial rhetorics to advance a new direction for rhetorical scholarship. Such work continues my interest in materiality, posthumanism, and human and nonhuman meaning-making represented by Planting the Anthropocene (2019).

As I've read widely into the "material turn" that scholars in rhetoric and composition are embracing, my attention has not only turned to human-nonhuman entanglements, but also theories of affect, new materialism, and reconciliation. This is represented by recent and upcoming publications and presentations:

“Birds as Rhetoric: An Ecological-Infrastructural Proposal.” Rhetoric Society of America Conference. 23 May, 2024. Denver, CO.
 
“Thinking with Pines: Rhetorical Ecologies of of Plantation Logics.” Rhetoric Society of America Conference. 23 May, 2024. Denver, CO.
 
“Sovereignty and Plantation Logics: Healing Beyond the Technofix.” American Association of Geographers Conference. 17 April, 2024. Honolulu, HI.
 
“Precarious Hope.” National Communication Association. 17 November 2023. National Harbor, MD.
 
 

“Bird Box: Designing Cross-Species Repair,” April 20-22, 2023, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania https://rcade.camden.rutgers.edu/2023symposium.html

Gries, Laurie, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon. “Introduction: Rhetorical New Materialisms.” Forum on Rhetorical New Materialisms. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 52.2 (June 2022): 137-147.

“Alternatives Between Zoe and Bios: Arts-Based Research Creation and Reclamation for Species at Risk.” Rhetoric Society of America Conference, 28 May 2022. Baltimore, Maryland.

“Recoveries and Reconsiderations: Selvedge Rhetorics and Material Memory.” Peitho 24.3 (Spring 2022). https://cfshrc.org/article/selvedge-rhetorics-and-material-memory/

“Hirondelusia: A Creative Turn Towards Species at Risk.” Art Installation with M. O’Gorman. Contemporary Art Forum of Kitchener and Area, June 1-July 1 2021. https://cafka21.cafka.org/critical-media-lab;https://hirondelusia.wordpress.com/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB-U7ujTCI8