Rate My Professor Daniel DeVinney

Daniel J. DeVinney is an Assistant Professor of Political Rhetoric in the School of Communication & Multimedia Studies at Florida Atlantic University. A scholar of political rhetoric and visual culture, he earned his Ph.D. in Communication with a Rhetorical Studies concentration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023. His dissertation, titled “The Post-racial Imaginary: Visual Logics of Race in the Obama and Trump Eras,” analyzed how visual practices during the Obama and Trump presidencies managed racial anxieties and power struggles through images in graphic design, photography, and media. DeVinney also holds an M.A. in Communication (Rhetorical Studies) from the University of Illinois (2018) and a B.A. in Communication and Classical Studies with a Creative Writing minor from Hope College (2014).

DeVinney's research interests encompass rhetoric, visual studies, political communication, and race and ethnicity studies. He investigates how visual culture shapes racial and political imaginations, focusing on photography, political posters, speeches, graphic design, and print media. His current book project examines visual practices constructing the “post-racial” myth in the Obama and early Trump eras. Key publications include “Designing ‘The People’: Constitutive Fractures in Contemporary Collectives” in Rhetoric & Public Affairs (2023) and “Legitimizing the First Black Presidency: Cinematic History and Rhetorical Vision in Barack Obama’s 2008 Victory Speech” in Southern Communication Journal (2021). Additionally, he authored a book review of The Philosophy Scare: The Politics of Reason in the Early Cold War in Quarterly Journal of Speech (2018) and co-authored an instructor’s manual for The History and Theory of Rhetoric. Prior to FAU, he taught courses at the University of Illinois including Visual Politics, Argumentation, Strategies of Persuasion, and Public Speaking, earning multiple List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent or Outstanding awards. DeVinney has received the Gerald A. Hauser Award for Outstanding Student Paper (Rhetoric Society of America, 2022), Cushman Top Student Paper Award (NCA Visual Communication Division, 2020), several NCA Top Student Paper awards, Humanities Research Institute Graduate Research Fellowship (2022–2023), and Elizabeth Winter Young Fellowships. His conference presentations feature at NCA and RSA, and he has served as a journal reviewer and graduate student association president.