James Porter

Educational Credentials

• Ph.D., English, University of Detroit
• M.A., English, University of Michigan
• B.A., English, John Carroll University

Biography

I am a teacher and scholar of rhetoric, focusing mainly on how technologies impact communication practices, particularly the ethics of practice, both historically (the printing press) and currently (AI).

Teaching Areas

• Rhetoric
• Ethics
• Professional/Technical Communication
• Data Visualization

Professional Experiences

Taught formerly at Michigan State University, Case Western Reserve University, Purdue University, University of California at Santa Barbara.

Research Interests

I do research and scholarship on professional communication, digital rhetoric, and technology, and, most recently, on the emergence and influence of AI-based writing systems.

Select Publications

Books

• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2017). Professional communication and network
  interaction: A rhetorical and ethical approach. New York: Routledge.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2009). The ethics of Internet research: A rhetorical, case-
  based process. New York: Peter Lang.
• Porter, James E., Sullivan, Patricia, and Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. (2008). Professional writing
  online (3rd ed.). Boston: Longman.
• Porter, James E. (1998). Rhetorical ethics and internetworked writing. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.
  (Won Computers and Writing award for Distinguished Book.)
• Sullivan, Patricia and Porter, James E. (1997). Opening spaces: Writing technologies and critical
  research practices. Greenwich, CT: Ablex. (Won NCTE award for Excellence in Technical and
  Scientific Communication, Best Book.)
• Porter, James E. (1992). Audience and rhetoric: An archaeological composition of the discourse
  community. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall/Studies in Writing and Culture.

Selected Articles and Chapters (Since 2017)

• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2023). Foreword. In Ann Hill Duin and Isabel Pedersen,
  Augmentation technologies and artificial intelligence in technical communication: Designing
  ethical futures (pp. xix-xxii). Routledge.
• Porter, James E. (2023). Rhetoric. In Han Yu and Jonathan Buehl (eds.), Keywords in technical and
  professional communication (pp. 247-252). WAC Clearinghouse.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2022). Team roles and rhetorical intelligence in human-
  machine writing. 2022 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm),
  2022, 384-391.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2021). Intertext: Writing machines and rhetoric. In Ann Hill
  Duin and Isabel Pedersen, Writing futures: Collaborative, algorithmic, autonomous (pp. 47-52).
  Springer.
• Porter, James. (2020). Recovering a good rhetoric: Rhetoric as techne and praxis. In John Duffy
  and Lois Agnew (eds.), Rewriting Plato's legacy: Ethics, rhetoric, and writing studies (pp. 15-36). Utah State University Press.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2020). Ethics for AI writing: The importance of rhetorical
  context. Proceedings of 2020 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES’20 ),
  February 7–8, 2020, New York, NY, USA.
• Porter, James E. (2020). Foreword: Interacting with friends, enemies, and strangers. In Jessica
  Reyman and Erika M. Sparby (eds.), Digital ethics: Rhetoric and responsibility in online aggression
  (pp. xv-xxii). New York: Routledge.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2018). Corporate response to employee social media
  missteps: A rhetorical and ethical lens. In Bastiaan Vanacker and Don Heider (eds.), Ethics for a
  digital age, volume 2 (pp. 51-77). New York: Peter Lang.
• Porter, James E. (2018). Rhetoric, copyright, techne: The regulation of social media production
  and distribution. In Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes (eds.), The Routledge handbook of
  digital writing and rhetoric (pp. 259-268). New York: Routledge.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2018). Digital media ethics and rhetoric. In Jonathan
  Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes (eds.), The Routledge handbook of digital writing and rhetoric
  (pp. 401-411). New York: Routledge.
• Porter, James E. (2017). Professional communication as phatic: From classical eunoia to
  personal AI. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 80(2), 174-193.