Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing
Dr. Whitney Jordan Adams is an Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric and Writing. As an educator and scholar, Dr. Adams’s diverse academic background spans business, rhetoric, communication, professional writing and literature. She has also taught at universities abroad, including the University of Versailles in France and the Harbin Institute of Technology in China. Dr. Adams is dedicated to fostering critical thinking, inclusivity, and scholarly engagement in both classroom and research settings.
Education
- MBA, Professional Management, Berry College
- PhD, Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design, Clemson University
- PhD Audit, Philosophy, Art, and Social Thought, The European Graduate School
- MA, English, The College of Charleston
- BA, English, Cognate in Biological Sciences, The University of South Carolina
Teaching Interests
- Digital Rhetoric and Digital Humanities
- Classical Rhetoric
- New Dialogism
- Professional Writing
- Writing Across the Curriculum
- Civic and Vernacular Rhetoric
- Community Building
Research Interests
Dr. Adams is a rhetorician. Her work explores rhetorics of place and how we engage with public memory. She also studies the rhetoric of online spaces and how these spaces reflect current ideologies. Recent publications also discuss writing pedagogy using Isocrates as a classical framework, as well as the importance of contingent faculty.
Community is also a concept she emphasizes, as she seeks ways to engage her students with their surrounding environment. She believes everyone has the ability to be a rhetor and use the power of rhetoric for positive change.
Selected Publications
“The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia: Exploring White Trash Rhetorics in Appalachia and Beyond.” Rhetorics of Southern Place: Contemporary Memoirs and Analyses, edited by Heather Palmer and Jennifer Beech. To be published by Brill Press, 2026.
Adams, Whitney Jordan. “Site of Contention: Rhetorics of/and Stone Mountain, Georgia.” Confronting Toxic Rhetoric: Writing Teachers’ Experiences of Rupture, Resistance, and Resilience, edited by Jamie White-Farnham, Bryna Siegel Finer, and Cathryn Molloy. Peter Lang Publishing, 2025, pp. 23-37. https://www.peterlang.com/document/1446367.
Adams, Whitney Jordan. “Rhetorical Error: Combating Post-Truth and AI Nihilism Through Active Discourse Production.” Papers in Arts and Humanities 4.2 (2024): 78-86. https://artshumanities.partium.ro/pah/article/view/174.
Vlah, Ana, Whitney Jordan Adams, Richard Branscomb, Foteini Egglezou, Matthew Houdek, Marta Kobylska, Shauna LaTosky, Josie Portz, Kinga J. Rogowska and James Clifford Swider. “The 4th International Rhetoric Workshop (Borders and Crossroads).” Govor 41, no. 2 (2024): 211-217. https://doi.org/10.22210/govor.2024.41.12.