beaslea@wfu.edu
Alessandra's research focuses on rhetorical theory and criticism, public address, and political theory. She addresses rhetorical constructions of citizenship in domestic and international contexts, researching innovative conceptions of citizenship tied to deliberation and participation rather than nationality. Her recent work explores the idea of European Union citizenship as a model of post-national engagement, focusing on the legal debates for the inclusion of third country nationals as resident-citizens, analyzing this and other political debates through Giambattista Vico's theory of /ingenium/ and other theories connecting politics, rhetoric and imagination. Citizenship is also the subject of her special topics seminar 'Practices of Citizenship,' where students organize and host a symposium. Her article “Public Discourse and Cosmopolitan Political Identity: Imagining the European Union Citizen,” published in /Futures/, was the winner of the Emerald Management Reviews Citation of Excellence Award.
