Jeff recently published his first book, Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance (University of Alabama Press). This analysis, which places contemporary rhetorical theory in conversation with identity and movement studies, focuses on the federal donor deferral policies that prohibit gay men from giving blood. Although organizations such as the FDA purport to secure public safety through a scrupulous deliberative process, Jeff argues these measures are substantiated by a deleterious scientific discourse that positions gay men as contagions. As a remedy, queer men have responded by quietly donating blood and verbally protesting in the ritual site. These practices underscore the constitutive, vernacular, and discursive modalities of citizenship, illustrating that civic identity rests not in the prescribed normativities of institutions, but the quotidian lives of social actors.
Articles
Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, and the Rhetoric of Religious Fundamentalism, Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2009)
The article reviews the book "Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, and the...
United We Stand, Divided We Fall”: AIDS, Armorettes, and the Tactical Repertoires of Drag (with Isaac West), Southern Communication Journal (2009)
This essay focuses on the Armorettes, an Atlanta-based drag troupe that has played a critical...
Media/Queered: Visibility and Its Discontents, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly (2008)
The interludes include reflections by Pulitzer Prize-winner Studs Turkel, Tracy Baim of the Windy City...
Passing, Protesting, and the Arts of Resistance: Infiltrating the Ritual Space of Blood Donation, Quarterly Journal of Speech (2008)
This essay critically engages challenges made against the federally mandated deferral policies which prohibit "men...
Books
Contributions to Books
A Queer Anxiety: Assimilation Politics and Cinematic Hedonics in Relax . . . It’s, LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain, (2007)
Presentations
Troubled Interventions: Public Policy, Vectors of Disease, and the Rhetoric of Diabetes Management, Rhetoric Society of America (2010)
There are Many Copies: Queer Subtext and Performative Reiteration in Battlestar Galactica, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2010)
Resisting the Rhetoric of Diabetes, Disability Studies Caucus of the National Communication Association (2009)