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Welcome to the website of Patrick Belanger. I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric Studies at Whitman College. Starting Fall 2013, I will join the Division of Humanities and Communication at Cal State, Monterey Bay as an Assistant Professor of Communication & Transformative Conflict Resolution.
My research and teaching are grounded at the locus of rhetoric and intercultural communication. I am presently writing a book on communication and decolonization in a global era: Dialogue and Justice: Rhetorics of Canadian Decolonization (under contract to the University of British Columbia Press). My central case study engages the politics of North American Indigenous reconciliation. Through critiquing distinct sites of public memory construction and contestation, I explore the capacities of rhetorical practice (broadly conceived) to motivate productive exchange between diverse groups in colonial arenas. I investigate a set of core questions:
• How can divided societies create and sustain public dialogue about matters of political, social, and economic justice?
• In contexts animated by power asymmetries and historical injustice, under what conditions does enhanced knowledge of the past and its legacy break inertia and motivate remedial action?
• In multicultural and polyethnic environments, how can diverse histories be put to productive use (via public remembrance) for a broader cross-section of society?
A recent article traces the interface of public memory and political apology in settler states:
Argumentation and Advocacy (49.1)
(Used with permission of the American Forensic Association)
