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About Lee Pierce

Lee M. Pierce (she/they) is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Geneseo specializing in rhetoric, race, and U.S. political culture. They also host the Media & Communications and Language channels for New Books Network and their own podcast titled RhetoricLee Speaking.

NBN Episodes hosted by Lee:

Language November 5, 2021

Editorial Bodies

Perfection and Rejection in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics

Michele Kennerly

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Though typically considered oral cultures, ancient Greece and Rome also boasted textual cultures, enabled by efforts to perfect, publish, and preserve both new and old writing. In Editorial Bodies: Perfection and …
Politics & Polemics November 3, 2021

White Tears/Brown Scars

How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

Ruby Hamad

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Called “powerful and provocative" by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times bestselling How to be an Antiracist, Ruby Hamad's White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women …
Media October 22, 2021

Politics for the Love of Fandom

Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World

Ashley Hinck

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World (Louisiana State Press, 2019) examines what Ashley Hinck calls “fan-based citizenship”: civic action that blends with and arises from …
Politics & Polemics September 17, 2021

Sensuous Knowledge

A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone

Minna Salami

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Minna Salami's book Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2021) is a collection of thought provoking essays that explore questions central to how we see ourselves, our history, and …
African American Studies August 20, 2021

The Second

Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

Carol Anderson

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second Amendment has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person …
Language July 26, 2021

No Future in This Country

The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry Mcneal Turner

Andre E. Johnson

Hosted by Lee Pierce
No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (U Mississippi Press, 2020) is a history of the career of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915), specifically focusing …
Gender Studies July 19, 2021

Militarized Maternity

Experiencing Pregnancy in the U. S. Armed Forces

Megan D. McFarlane

Hosted by Lee Pierce
The rights of pregnant workers as well as (the lack of) paid maternity leave have increasingly become topics of a major policy debate in the United States. Yet, few discussions …
Media July 6, 2021

Architects of Memory

Information and Rhetoric in a Networked Archival Age

Nathan R. Johnson

Hosted by Lee Pierce
We are now living in the richest age of public memory. From museums and memorials to the vast digital infrastructure of the internet, access to the past is only a …
African American Studies June 30, 2021

Black Aliveness, Or a Poetics of Being

Kevin Quashie

Hosted by Lee Pierce
In Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being (Duke University Press, 2012), Kevin Quashie imagines a Black world in which one encounters Black being as it is rather than only as …
Gender Studies June 30, 2021

Debating Women

Gender, Education, and Spaces for Argument, 1835-1945

Carly S. Woods

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Spanning a historical period that begins with women’s exclusion from university debates and continues through their participation in coeducational intercollegiate competitions, Debating Women: Gender, Education, and Spaces for Argument, 1835-1945 (Michigan …
Politics & Polemics June 23, 2021

Usual Cruelty

The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

Alec Karakatsanis

Hosted by Lee Pierce
From an award-winning civil rights lawyer, a profound challenge to our society's normalization of the caging of human beings, and the role of the legal profession in perpetuating it Alec …
Media June 17, 2021

Rebirthing a Nation

White Women, Identity Politics, and the Internet

Wendy K. Z. Anderson

Hosted by Lee Pierce
In Rebirthing a Nation: White Women, Identity Politics, and the Internet (U Mississippi Press, 2021), author Wendy K. Z. Anderson details how white nationalist and alt-right women refine racist rhetoric …
Media June 2, 2021

Photographic Presidents

Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital

Cara A. Finnegan

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Defining the Chief Executive via flash powder and selfie sticks. In this episode, Dr. Lee M. Pierce (they & she) interviews Dr. Cara A. Finnegan about Photographic Presidents: Making History …
Media May 17, 2021

Misogynoir Transformed

Black Women’s Digital Resistance

Moya Bailey

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Where racism and sexism meet—an understanding of anti-Black misogyny. When Moya Bailey first coined the term misogynoir, she defined it as the ways anti-Black and misogynistic representation shape broader ideas …
General History May 17, 2021

The Monopolists

Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game

Mary Pilon

Hosted by Lee Pierce
The inside story of the world's most famous board game-a buried piece of American history with an epic scandal that continues today. The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind …
Media May 4, 2021

How Non-Being Haunts Being

On Possibilities, Morality, and Death Acceptance

Corey Anton

Hosted by Lee Pierce
How Non-being Haunts Being reveals how the human world is not reducible to “what is.” Human life is an open expanse of “what was” and “what will be,” “what might …
Media April 30, 2021

Reimagining the Middle Passage

Black Resistance in Literature, Television, and Song

Tara T. Green

Hosted by Lee Pierce
From ships and novels to Mardi Gras, water, and television, how does the legacy of the Middle Passage, the leg of the Atlantic through which African people were trafficked as …
Media April 29, 2021

The African Lookbook

A Visual History of 100 Years of African Womanhood

Catherine E. McKinley

Hosted by Lee Pierce
What does it mean to tie your cloth to that of another person, as in the Ghanaian tradition, or to be in full dress? How is fashion photography in a …
Media April 28, 2021

Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy

A Psychoanalytic Exploration

Jack Black

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Jack Black, Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy (Routledge 2021). In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining …
Media April 14, 2021

Political Perversion

Rhetorical Aberration in the Time of Trumpeteering

Joshua Gunn

Hosted by Lee Pierce
When Trump became president, much of the country was repelled by what they saw as the vulgar spectacle of his ascent, a perversion of the highest office in the land …
Film March 31, 2021

Hidden Hitchcock

D. A. Miller

Hosted by Lee Pierce
After decades of criticism about perhaps the most famous director in history, it seems that nothing is left to be said. But maybe critics just haven’t been willing to be …
Literature December 1, 2020

Heirlooms

Stories

Rachel Hall

Hosted by Lee Pierce
“It turns out there are things that cannot be left. The very nature of secrets, for instance, insists that they be kept.” On this episode of the New Books Network …
Media November 27, 2020

Irony and Outrage

The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young

Hosted by Lee Pierce
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (s/t) Dr. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young (s/h) about why liberals love satire and conservative love outrage and how the two …
Language November 24, 2020

A Revolution in Tropes

Alloiostrophic Rhetoric

Jane S. Sutton and Mari Lee Mifsud

Hosted by Lee Pierce
Aristotle, the co-called father of rhetoric, supposedly conceptualized his theory of persuasion as a means of bringing meaning to rest. But what if there’s another story, one in which forgotten …