Graduate Student, English
David Kaufer
About
My primary research interest is Asian American rhetoric, which I approach through a combination of public sphere studies and rhetorical and linguistic analysis. I am also interested in the modeling of language and identity in early Quaker tracts.
In my dissertation, I analyze how Japanese Americans used their own local media to articulate themselves as a public in the years between the two world wars, focusing particularly on their responses to questions about their loyalty to the United States. I combine techniques from rhetorical analysis and corpus analysis to analyze how the language used in local media was both a reaction against and a borrowing of the language used in more mainstream media.
I enjoy balancing my research with my teaching, and I have experience teaching 76-101: Interpretation and Argument, 76-386/786: Language and Culture, and 76-270: Writing for the Professions. I also work as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence.
Contact Information
Carnegie Mellon University
Department of English
259 Baker Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
