John Moffatt PhD
Associate Professor Ron and Jane Graham School of Professional Development

D. Queen’s University at Kingston, 1994
A. Queen’s University at Kingston, 1988
A. University of Toronto, 1987

• RCM 400 The Theory and Practice of Persuasion
• RCM 404 Leadership as Communication
• RCM 406 Studies in Communication Series
• RCM 407 Rhetorical Editing
• RCM 800 Rhetorical Foundations

April 2019     Jocelyn Peltier-Huntley  MSc     InterD/CGPS    Professional Communication and Workplace Culture; Closing the Gender Gap in Canadian Mining: An Interdisciplinary Mixed Methods Study (Co-Supervised with Dr. Emily McWalter, Dept of Mechanical Engineering)

 

April 2016        Liwei Zhang                 Ph.D     InterD/GSR      CDA/Rhetorical Communication:“A Lack of Talent is a Virtue in a Woman”: Interdisciplinary Critical Perspective

 

Feb 2013         Tess Laidlaw                Ph.D.    InterD/GSR      Rhetorical Communication: The Rhetoric of Reportage: The Media Construction of a Pandemic

 

Sept. 2011       Jeanie E. Wills             Ph.D.    InterD/GSR      Rhetorical Communication: Rhetorical Motives in Advertising: A Theory of Advertising Genre as Religious Discourse

 

Fall 2011          Janelle Hutchinson      M.A.    InterD/GSR      Rhetorical Communication: Goaded, In the Spirit of Hierarchy: Exigence, Audience, and the Maclean's University Ratings

 

Fall 2011          Julian Demkiw             M.A.    InterD/GSR      Rhetorical Communication: Taking Rhetoric to Work: A Dramatistic Analysis of Organizational Leadership in 'The Office’

Refereed Journal Publications 

Published: 

Tess Laidlaw and John Moffatt, 2020. “Symbolic cures: Scapegoating and the ‘constabulary’ function in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic”. Rhetor 8, Journal of the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric.

John Moffatt, 2016. “Policing History: Burke’s Constabulary and Forensic Functions of Rhetoric and the Controversy over the War of 1812 Commemoration.” Rhetor 6, Journal of the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric.

John Moffatt, “The Sparrow and the Shaking Tent: Containing the Convert in Two Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Ojibwe Conversion Narratives.”  Rhetor 3, Journal of the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric.  

John Moffatt, 1998. “Inneal-Ciuil an Diabhail/the Devil’s Instrument:  Popular Culture and the Rise of the Gaelic Learner.”  Journal of Celtic Language Learning, 4 (1998): 5-15.

 

Forthcoming: 

John Moffatt and David Beard. 2020. “Pimitamon: Conceptualising Contact in the Canadian North through the Graphic Narratives of Jeff Lemire”. Nordlit 45 (2020)

 

Refereed Conference Proceedings

John Moffatt, 1997. “A Commodified Antimodernism:  Evangelism, the Gaelic Text, and the Construction of Ethnotourism in Nova Scotia.”  Proceedings of the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric, 6, 1994-97:  24-33.

 

Books/Book Chapters 

John Moffatt, Corey Owen, Debora Rolfes, and Jeanie Wills, 2019. “‘Know-Nothing Foreign Celebrity Millionaires’: Celebrity, Authenticity, and the Sabotage of Civil Discourse in the Controversy of the Alberta Oil Sands”. The Rhetoric of Oil in the Twenty-First Century: Government, Corporate, and Activist Discourses. Edited by Heather Graves and David Beard. Routledge/Taylor and Francis (Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Communication).227-254.

 

Jennifer MacLennan and John Moffatt, 2002. “Reclaiming ‘Authenticity’:  Cape Breton’s Magazine and the Commodification of Canadian Insularity.”  In Civic Discourse and Cultural Politics in Canada: A Cacaphony of Voices.  Sherry Devereaux Ferguson and Leslie Regan Shade.  In the series Civic Discourse for the Third Millenium, Michael Prosser, ed. Westport, Ablex Publishers, 2002.  264-274.

 

Jennifer MacLennan and John Moffatt, 2002. “An Island View of the Word:  Canadian Community as Insularity in the Popular Writing of Stompin’ Tom Connors.” The Rhetoric of Canadian Writing (Studies in Comparative Literature 38).  Connie Steenman-Marcusse.  Amsterdam and New York:  Editions Rodopi b.v., 2002.  271-299.

 

Forthcoming:

John Moffatt. “The Future is East: Ideological Mapping in the Vinland Sagas.” What is North? Visualising, Representing and Imagining the North from the Viking Age to Modern Times. Proceedings of the 3rd St Magnus Conference, Orkney April 2016, eds. O. Plumb, A. Sanmark, and D. Heddle. The North Atlantic World Series, vol 1. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols (May 2020).

 

Presentations:

David Beard and John Moffatt, 2019. “Canadian Multimodal Rhetorics: The Case of Gord Downie and Jeff Lemire's The Secret Path.” Revised version of earlier public lecture. RhetCanada/Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric Annual Conference, CFHSS Congress, University of British Columbia. Presented by Dr.Beard, June 2019
 
John Moffatt and David Beard, 2019. “Pimitamon: Conceptualising Contact in the Canadian North through the Graphic Narratives of Jeff Lemire”. Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Annual Conference, CFHSS Congress, University of British Columbia. Presented by Dr. Beard, June 2019.
 
John Moffatt, 2018. “Tomorrow, I would begin to know the truth: Farley Mowat’s Sibir as “Secular Prayer” for the Canadian North”. RhetCanada/Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric Annual Conference, CFHSS Congress, University of Regina, 2018.
 
John Moffatt, 2017. “Cautiously Optimistic: Imagining a Multicultural Canada in 1941”. RhetCanada/ Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric (CSSR) Annual Conference, Ryerson University, June 2017.
 
John Moffatt, 2016. “A Question of Displacement: Reading the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation’s Wartime Defence of Asian Canadians.” Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric (CSSR) annual conference, University of Calgary, June 2016.
 
John Moffatt, 2016. “The Future is East: Mapping the Retreat from the Viking Ethos in the Vinland Sagas”. St Magnus Conference, Centre for Nordic Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands, Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland UK, April 2016.
 
John Moffatt, (2015). “Citizenship for Sir John Franklin: The Erebus Discovery as Burkean Forensic in Canadian Popular Media.” Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric (CSSR) annual conference, University of Ottawa, June 2015 (refereed).
 
John Moffatt, 2014. “Irony, Bordering on Treason: The ‘Tokyo Rose’ Trial as Burkean ‘Secular Prayer’ “ Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference, San Antonio TX, May 22-26.
 
John Moffatt, 2013. “Without Borders: The Rhetoric of Remembering Norman Bethune, Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric Annual Conference/Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Victoria, BC, Canada, June 1-3.
 
John Moffatt, 2012. “Policing History: Reading the Opposition to a National Commemoration of the War of 1812”.  Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric, June 1, 2012.
 
John Moffatt, 2012. “Tell Us a War Story:  The War of 1812 and the Struggle over Public History in Canada.”  Rhetoric Society of America, part of Supersession on International Rhetorics, May 26, 2012.
 
John Moffatt, 2012. “Uncer giedd geador:  Rhetorical personae in the Old English Wulf and Eadwacer.”  Rhetoric Society of America, May 25, 2012.
 
John Moffatt, 2010. “The Homeward Turn:  The Transformation of Ethos in the Icelandic Vinland Sagas.”  Rhetoric Society of America, May 2010.
 
John Moffatt, 2008. “The Broken Hilt:  Reading the Rhetoric of Identification in Beowulf.”  “The Oral, the Written, and Other Verbal Media” conference, University of Saskatchewan, Summer 2008.
 
John Moffatt, 2008. “Individual Destinies, Collective Experiences:  Historical Docudrama and Canadian-American Difference.”  Canadian Society of the Study of Rhetoric, June 2008.
 
John Moffatt, 2008. “Out of Eden:  The Changing Ethos of Celtic neo-Traditional music.”   Rhetoric Society of America, May 2008.
 
John Moffatt, 2007 “’That Weird White Man’s Language’:  Chinook and the Rhetoric of Linguistic Identity in British Columbia.”  BC Worlds conference, Harrison Hot Springs, BC, April 28, 2007.
 
John Moffatt, 2000 With Jennifer MacLennan, University of Saskatchewan.  “An Island View of the World:  Canadian Community as Insularity in the Popular Writing of Stompin’ Tom Connors.”  Fourteenth Leiden October Conference:  The Rhetoric of Canadian Writing.  Leiden University, Netherlands, October 20, 2000 (presented by Dr. MacLennan).
 
John Moffatt, 1998. “The Spoken Landscape:  Orality and Exile in Old English and Scottish Gaelic Poetry of Dislocation.”  Canadian Comparative Literature Association, Ottawa, ON, May 28, 1998.
 
John Moffatt 1998. “The Sparrow and the Shaking Tent:  Conversion and Community in Two Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Ojibwe Conversion Narratives.”  Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric, Ottawa, ON, May 27, 1998.
 
John Moffatt, 1997. “Commodifying Linguistic Antimodernism:  The Gaelic Text and the Construction of Ethnotourism in Nova Scotia.”  Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, July 21, 1997.
 
John Moffatt, 1997. “Borrowing Ancestors:  Chaucer’s Franklin, the Breton Lay, and the Appropriation of ‘Celtic Difference.’”  Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, Banff, AB, May 17, 1997.
 
John Moffatt, 1997. “Inneal-Ciuil an Diabhail/The Devil’s Instrument:  Technology and the Accommodation of Popular Culture in Contemporary Scottish Gaelic Literacy.”  Northwest Communication Association, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 12/4/1997.
 
John Moffatt, 1991. “Commandment and Interpretation:  The Ironic Deployment of Certain Heroic Attitudes in Genesis B.”  ACCUTE, Queen’s University, 27/5/1991.

Provost’s College Teaching Award (Engineering) 2016

USSU Excellence in Teaching Award, 2015