Associate Professor
Office: GLA 133
905 688 5550 x5001
gcoskanjohnson@brocku.ca
Affiliated Faculty, MA in Social Justice and Equity Studies
PhD Composition and Cultural Rhetoric, Syracuse University
MA TESOL, Northern Arizona University
BA History, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Teaching Area: Writing and Rhetoric
My research explores the rhetorical entanglements of sovereign power and transnational migration. I examine public and “official” texts that have become widely available to the North American public because of the Freedom of Information Act and the increasing digitalization of such documents. I am interested in the ways that the increasing publicity of such texts influences public discourses of immigration and perceptions of the “foreigner.”
My current research project, “(Il)legal, (Ir)regular, (Un)documented: Rhetorics of Sovereignty and Transnational Migration,” examines tensions that emerge in national and international discourses of transnational migration. I welcome undertaking supervisions in any area of rhetorical studies as well as work linked to border studies, transnational migration, human rights, transnational feminism, the nation and its nationalisms, and postcolonial studies.
“Osama bin Laden and the ‘Illegal’ Mexican Immigrant: Rhetorics of Death and Dying in the US National Imaginary.” JAC: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Politics. Forthcoming.
“Death, Dying, and Serendipity in the Scholarly Imagination.” Serendipity in Rhetoric: Writing, and Literacy Research, Eds. Peter Goggin & Maureen Daly Goggin. Utah State University Press. Forthcoming, 2018.
“American Rhetorics of Sovereignty and (Im)mobility in the Age of the Global Flow.” Amerikastudien – American Studies. Vol. 61. 2016.
“On Gothic Romance and the Happy Ending: Legislating the Human Rights of Transnational Migrant Workers and their Families.” Discursive Framings of Human Rights: Negotiating Agency and Victimhood. Eds. Jonas Ross Kjærgård, Karen-Margrethe Simonson. London: Birbeck Law Press. 2016.
“Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif Did Not Go Quietly: Gitmo and a Discourse in Motion.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. Dec. 14, 2015. Available online at: http://www.enculturation.net/adnan-farhan-abdul-latif-did-not-go-quietly
“Laughing Alone like a Mad Person: the Mobile Body’s Unmeasurable Response.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies.Vol. 15(1) 2015. 49 – 60. Available online at:
http://csc.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/15/1/49.pdf?ijkey=6ZxH9tHlDn1MqVr&keytype=finite
“Troubling Citizenship: Arizona’s SB1070 and the rhetorics of “tough” Immigration Law.” Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric and Society. Vol. 2.1. 2011 Web. http://www.presenttensejournal.org/
“What Writer Would not be an Indian for a While?: Charles Alexander Eastman, Critical Memory, and Audience.” Studies in American Indian Literature. 18.2 2006. 105 – 131.
