Stuart J. Murray
Canada Research Chair in Rhetoric and Ethics
Synopsis
Stuart J. Murray, from the Department of English Language and Literature, researches ethics in light of the ethical challenges raised by burgeoning biotechnologies and biopolitical forms of governance.
Research and Development
As the Canada Research Chair in Rhetoric and Ethics, Murray has created the Rhetoric & Ethics Research Lab which fosters transdisciplinary research, teaching, and community dialogue on the discursive production and limits of “life”. The Lab’s activities focus on critical ethical and textual inquiry at various intersectional sites. In his research, Murray addresses the constitution of subjectivity through biotechnology, biopolitics, and global media networks. More specifically, his research interrogates the ways in which the concept of “life” is constituted and deployed as an ethical good, from human rights to biophysiology, and from civil society to bioethics.
By drawing on and incorporating the lessons of rhetorical theory and criticism, textuality studies, and poststructuralism, he hopes to contribute to a better understanding of ethical life, relationality, and sociality. This perspective is better able to address subjectivities constituted in the wake of advanced biotechnologies, healthcare systems, and communications networks and practices. The objective is to reorient ethical discourse and practice away from the tradition of liberal humanism, and instead to look at the ways that ethics is a rhetorical practice located in and through bodies, political identities, and communicative networks and their effects.
Biography
Murray has long been interested in questioning how we understand ourselves and who or what influences our perception of ourselves and the world. After studying Philosophy at the University of Toronto (B.A.), at the University of London (M.A.) and at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium (M.Phil), Murray completed his doctoral degree in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Beginning his career at Ryerson University, Murray joined Carleton as Canada Research Chair in Rhetoric and Ethics in January 2012. Murray’s main interests also include biopolitics and bioethics, critical theory and media, medical humanities, and phenomenology. He was awarded the SSHRC Standard Research Grant 2009-2012 and the CIHR Operating Grant 2011-2013. He is also the editor of MediaTropes, a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary eJournal devoted to the study of media and mediation.
Major Awards/Honours
- SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2012-2014
- SRC Award, Ryerson University 2009-2010
- Undergraduate Teaching Award, University of Toronto 2005-2006
- SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Toronto 2004-2006
- Chancellor’s Fellowship, UC Berkeley 2003-2004
- Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, UC Berkeley 2002-2003
- SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, UC Berkeley 2001-2002
- ERASMUS Scholarship, Bergische Universität-Gesamthochschule Wuppertal, Germany 1995
Contact
Department of English Language and Literature
Department: 613-520-2310
Office: 613-520-2600 x 2314
Email: stuart_murray@carleton.ca
Rhetoric & Ethics Research Lab Facebook Page
Email: rhetoric@carleton.ca