Let’s see…my origin story…

Who is Jonathan C Evans?

I, myself, am a student, all it be a PhD student in Rhetoric, but a student nonetheless. For those of you not familiar with Rhetoric, it is a truly ancient and wonderful art, primarily concerned with persuasion, audience awareness, and most often in modern times writing. To sum up, I am trained in “word magic” so…yeah, watch out.

My background, like some of you out there, is diverse and broad. I received my Bachelors degree, with a major in European History and minor in Philosophy and Social Science from Northwestern State University in 2003. In turn, I received my Masters in English, also from Northwestern State University, in 2007 with a focus on Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics. I went on to teach two years – one at Mansfield High School in Mansfield, LA and the other at Lee Jr. High in Monroe, LA – before returning to school this past fall at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX where I am pursuing my PhD.

I guess that the beauty of being involved in academics is that the things I am interested in can, and often are, turned into professional endeavors as well. A great deal of my interests lie in the study of rhetoric – wonderfully covering anything and everything – and therefore allowing me freedom in the things I want to utilize academically. I am a big fan of science fiction, particularly Battlestar Galactica (which I presented on at a science fiction conference [SFRA] in the summer of 2008). I love off beat comedy and television, like The Office, The Soup, Futurama, The Venture Brothers Parks and Recreation, Mad Men, Sherlock, and Community. Additionally, I love history, particularly Ancient Roman History and most things European. I love Italy, and have been there myself. When I am not reading theory, or Aristotle (love Aristotle) or Roman History, I enjoy the comedy of John Hodgman and Monty Python, the works of Hunter S. Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk, movies of Kevin Smith and Wes Anderson.

I am also a big fan of comic books, so much so that I attended a conference on them in Oxford, England this past semester – the 1st Global Conference on the Graphic Novel. I also just was one of two members of the conference who co-edited the eBook version of the conference – it’s coming soon.

That’s all for me.