A.J. Caschetta Headshot

A.J. Caschetta

Principal Lecturer

Department of English
College of Liberal Arts

Office Location

A.J. Caschetta

Principal Lecturer

Department of English
College of Liberal Arts

Education

BA, Nazareth College of Rochester; MA, University of Missouri; Ph.D., New York University

Bio

At New York University I studied the effects of the French Revolution and Reign of Terror on British society. After 9/11, I began focusing on the rhetoric of radical Islamists and on Western academic narratives explaining Islamist terrorism. In 2014 I was named a fellow of the Middle East Forum, and in 2015 I was named a Shillman/Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum. I teach literature classes in the English Department and a class cross-listed with the Political Science Department titled 'The Rhetoric of Terrorism'.

Select Scholarship

Journal Paper
Caschetta, A.J. "State Department Failed to Fulfill a Key Duty in 2022." National Review. January 3 (2023): N/A. Web.
Caschetta, A.J. "2022, Academia\'s Worst Year Yet?" The American Spectator. January 4 (2023): N/A. Web.
Caschetta, A.J. "Another Reminder that White Supremacists Aren't the Only Threat to the Homeland." National Review. January 8 (2023): N/A. Web.
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Published Review
Caschetta, A.J. "A Is for Apologist." Rev. of Islam in America: Exploring the Issues, by Craig Considine. Middle East Quarterly Jan. 2021: Spring Issue. Web.
Caschetta, A.J. "The Biopolitical Book of Silliness." Rev. of Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human: Forensic Ecologies of Violence, by John Pugliese. The Middle East Quarterly Jun. 2021: N/A. Web.
Caschetta, A.J. Rev. of Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape SCientific Knowledge, by Jess Beir. Middle East Quarterly Jan. 2020: N/A. Web.
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Published Article
Caschetta, A.J.“Defending Edward Said?” Middle East Quarterly, 17.1 (Winter 2010): 78-80. Print. *

Currently Teaching

ENGL-210
3 Credits
In this course, students will study literature, movements, and writers within their cultural contexts and in relation to modes of literary production and circulation. Students will hone their skills as attentive readers and will engage with literary analysis and cultural criticism. The class will incorporate various literary, cultural, and interdisciplinary theories--such as psychoanalytic theory, feminist and queer theories, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory. Using these theoretical frameworks in order to study texts, students will gain a strong foundation for analyzing the ways literary language functions and exploring the interrelations among literature, culture, and history. In doing so, they will engage issues involving culture, identity, language, ethics, race, gender, class, and globalism, among many others.
ENGL-260
3 Credits
This course is a rigorous introduction to the formal study of rhetoric. Often defined as the “art of persuasion,” rhetoric helps us understand the complexities of marshaling others to see, believe and act in particular ways. Reading a range of rhetorical theory—from the ancient to the contemporary—students will investigate how language is used to create meaning, construct identity, organize social groups, and produce change. Because argument and persuasion inherently involve ethical questions of power, students will also consider who and what benefits or is marginalized by particular assumptions, claims and practices. The course emphasizes cultural rhetoric and rhetorical genre theory to ask what different types of texts do, what cultural role they play in shaping knowledge, and what ideologies they embody. Students will analyze the rhetoric observed in a range of media—academic research, public communication, digital material, data visualization—and compose arguments, identifying assumptions, misinformation/disinformation, and counter arguments. Students engage with rhetorical theory to pose complex questions about important social issues, consider the discursive requirements of the moment, and write intentionally for a target audience.
ENGL-275
3 Credits
In this course students will focus on reading and analyzing storytelling as a literary practice. It introduces the basic elements of narrative and story, acknowledging these as a primary way that we organize information and communicate our experiences, whether in fictional or real-world domains. The course explores defining characters of narrative expression and storytelling: story arcs, conflict, transformation, plot, and structural relationships among characters and also between author, text, and audience/reader. Exploring influential commentary on “story” and considering significant differences between oral, print, and digital storytelling methods, the course invites students to consider how the foundations of storytelling have evolved over time, and how new techniques continue to emerge in the present day.
ENGL-333
3 Credits
This class examines the history of terrorism (both the concept and the term), definitions of terrorism and attempts to explain the root causes of terrorism through rhetorical and ethical analysis of narratives written by historians, journalists, and terrorists themselves. Students will read and discuss charters, manifestoes and messages (terrorism texts) of domestic and foreign, regional and global, non-state entities motivated by politics or religion to commit violence, as well as the efforts of analysts to explain and contextualize their activities.