Daniel M. Gross

Picture of Daniel M. Gross
Professor, English
School of Humanities
Critical Theory Emphasis, Affiliated Faculty
Campus Writing and Communication Coordinator
Faculty Director, Center for Excellence in Writing and Communication
Director, Rhetoric Research Cluster
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1998, Rhetoric
University of California, Irvine
346 Humanities Instructional Building
Mail Code: 2650
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
History and Theory of Rhetoric; Heidegger and Rhetoric; Emotion Studies; Medical Humanities; Early Modern Literature and Culture
Research Abstract
Rhetoric "moves," and as such, it is an architectonic that has quietly helped structure modern disciplines from politics and psychology to the study of literature. Therefore to study these disciplines in early modernity or even today is to engage, often unwittingly, rhetorical traditions. As a historian and theorist of rhetoric, then, my job is to show through scholarship and teaching how productive this engagement can be when it is made explicit. In doing this work my goal is to revise the boundaries of what we consider "rhetoric" in the global context, which is now defined primarily within the disciplines of communication studies and composition studies. At the same time I like to promote the presence of rhetoric in neighbor disciplines, including education, history, psychology, anthropology, politics, philosophy, and the study of literature. My work on Emotion Studies also runs through the history and theory of rhetoric where we find a traditional relationship between the rhetoric of passions, and the rhetoric of figures and tropes. Finally, rhetoric has always been educational: it moves through people and their everyday lives, which also means that its scholarship can never get too far away from what happens in the undergraduate writing and rhetoric classroom.
Publications
BOOKS:

The Cambridge History of Rhetoric, Volume 5: Modern Rhetoric after 1900. Co-edited with Steven J. Mailloux and LuMing Mao. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Being-Moved: Rhetoric As the Art of Listening. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020.

Uncomfortable Situations: Emotion between Science and the Humanities. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2017.

Science and Emotions after 1945: A Transatlantic Perspective. Co-edited volume with Frank Biess. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014.

The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Heidegger and Rhetoric (SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy). Edited with Ansgar Kemmann. Albany: SUNY Press, 2005.

JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUES, EDITED:

"Why Theory Now?" Philosophy & Rhetoric 53.1 (2020)

SELECT ARTICLES, BOOK CHAPTERS, PODCAST EPISODES:

"Introduction," with Steven J. Mailloux and LuMing Mao. In The Cambridge History of Rhetoric, Volume 5: Modern Rhetoric after 1900. Daniel M. Gross, Steven J. Mailloux, LuMing Mao, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025).

"The Rise of Rhetorical Theory. " In The Cambridge History of Rhetoric, Volume 5: Modern Rhetoric after 1900. Daniel M. Gross, Steven J. Mailloux, LuMing Mao, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025).

“Construct Validity and the Demise of the Analytical Writing Placement Examination (AWPE) at the University of California: A Tale of Social Mobility.” In Journal of Writing Assessment 17.2 (2024).

"Denazification: Rhetoric, Politics, and the Affective Turn." The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory, Dilip Gaonkar and Keith Topper, eds. Oxford University Press (2022).

"Being-Moved: Rhetoric As the Art of Listening"
Live Theory: Applications for Writing and Rhetoric, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Podcast Episode, March 21, 2022.

"What Can Darwin (Still) Teach Us about Emotions"
Creative Language Technologies Podcast Episode, January 28, 2022.

"Historiography and the Limits of (Sacred) Rhetoric." Responding to the Sacred: An Inquiry into the Limits of Rhetoric. Michael Bernard-Donals and Kyle Jensen, eds. Pennsylvania State University Press (2021).

"Darwin and the Situation of Emotion Research" with Stephanie Preston. In Emotion Studies 12.3 (2020).

"Beginnings and Ends of Rhetorical Theory: Ann Arbor 1900." In Philosophy & Rhetoric 53.1 (2020).

"Martin Heidegger's SS 1924 Lecture Course on Aristotle's Rhetoric and the destruction of the Corpus Aristotelicum." Commenter la Rhétorique d'Aristote de l'Antiquité à la Periode Contemporaine, Frédérique Woerther, ed. Brill (2018).

"Darwin, un sympathisant des Humanités." Sensibilités: Histoire, critique et sciences sociales 5 (2018).

"Heidegger and Rhetoric: Key Research Implications." Philosophy & Rhetoric 50th anniversary contribution, by invitation (2017).

"The Passions of Rhetoric and Composition: An Interview with Daniel M. Gross." Composition Forum 34 (2016).

"Rhetoric and the Origins of the Human Sciences: A Foucauldian Tale Untold." Quarterly Journal of Speech published on behalf of the National Communication Association 102.3 (2016).

"Frameworks for Failure, Or What Happened to the Social Turn in Writing Studies?" with Jonathan Alexander. Pedagogy 16.2 (2016).

"Introduction: Emotional Returns" with Frank Biess. Science and Emotions after 1945: A Transatlantic Perspective. Frank Biess and Daniel M. Gross, eds. The University of Chicago Press Chicago (2014).

"Emotion Science and the Heart of a Two-Cultures Problem" with Stephanie D. Preston. Science and Emotions after 1945: A Transatlantic Perspective. Frank Biess and Daniel M. Gross, eds. The University of Chicago Press (2014).

"How Can the Theory of Cognitive and Emotional Extension Alter What We Find in 18th-Century Literature?" Emotion und Kognition. Transformationen in der europäischen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts, Sonja Koroliov, ed. "Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung," Bd. 48. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter (2013)

"Toward a Rhetoric of Cognition." Neurorhetorics, Jordynn Jack, ed. Taylor & Francis (2012)

"Political Pathology." Reasoning Effects: Rhetoric and Medicine in Early Modern Europe, Stephen Pender, Nancy Struever, eds. Series: Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity. Ashgate (2012).

"Active Listening, Passive Voices: Gendered Legacies in the History of Rhetoric." Special issue:"Rhetorik und Subjektivität" Rhetorik: Ein internationales Jahrbuch 30 (2011).

"Defending the Humanities with Charles Darwin's _The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals_ (1872)." Critical Inquiry 37.1 (2010): 34-59.

"Listening Culture." Culture and Rhetoric, Berghahn Books Studies in Rhetoric and Culture I, Ivo Strecker, Stephen Tyler, Robert Hariman, eds. Berghahn (2009): 59-73.

"Personal Identity in the History of Ideas: The Born-Again Christian as a Case Study." Rethinking History 13.3 (2009): 197-215.

"The Art of Listening: A Course in the Humanities." The International Journal of Listening 21 (2007): 72-79.

"The Heart of Emotion." New Scientist 2553 (2006): 50-51.

"Caussin's Passion and the New History of Rhetoric." Rhetorica 21.2 (2003): 89-112.

"Foucault's Analogies, or How to Be an Historian of the Present without Being a Presentist." Clio: A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History 31.1 (2001): 57-82.

"Early Modern Emotion and the Economy of Scarcity." Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001): 308-321.

"Melanchthon's Rhetoric and the Practical Origins of Reformation Human Science." History of the Human Sciences 13.3 (2000): 5-22.

"Metaphor and Definition in Vico's New Science." Rhetorica 14.4 (1996), 359-381.
Grants
National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored Humanities Iowa Major Grant 2003, 2006
National Endowment for the Arts sponsored Iowa Arts Council Grant 2006
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UCLA Humanities Consortium, Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies, 1998-2000
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Annual Grant 1996-1997
Professional Societies
Modern Language Association
International Society for the History of Rhetoric
Rhetoric Society of America
Conference on College Composition and Communication
National Communication Association
Last updated
03/14/2024