His research and teaching interests include rhetoric, civic engagement, social controversy, and political communication. Specifically, his research focuses on public deliberations and controversies involving gender, sexuality, race, ability, and religion. Throughout his research, he also analyzes how rhetoric animates social change and can create, sustain, or disrupt community. For example, his dissertation details how pro-GLBTQ Christian advocates deployed opaque and hidden appeals to foster social change and communal cultivation during the 1960s and early 1970s. He recently received the Karlyn Kohrs Campbell award for the top paper in Rhetorical Theory and Criticism from the Central States Communication Association. His research also appears in Southern Communication Journal and QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking.