Jennifer Mercieca

Dr. Jennifer Mercieca is an historian of American political rhetoric. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University, Founding Director of the Aggie Agora, Chair of the Public Address Division of the National Communication Association, founding editor of Citizen Critics, and creator of the #teamrhetoric hashtag on Twitter.

She writes about American political discourse, especially as it relates to citizenship, democracy, and the presidency. Jennifer has published two books about political rhetoric: Founding Fictions (University of Alabama Press, 2010) and The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency (Texas A&M University Press, 2014). She is finishing a third book about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and demagoguery. She has written about Trump’s rhetoric for USA TodayThe Huffington PostWashington Post, and other major media outlets. She has also been interviewed about Trump’s rhetoric by the BBC World NewsNPR’s All Things ConsideredThe New York TimesAustralia’s ABC RadioSlate, and many other outlets throughout the United States and Worldwide. Her articles about rhetoric, Trump, and the 2016 election were read over 250,000 times during the election. In 2016 she was invited to deliver a TedX Talk: “Be a Citizen, Not a Partisan.”

She is a 2016 recipient of the Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching, the highest award given to faculty for teaching at Texas A&M University.