Biography

Jason Del Gandio’s scholarship focuses on the performance, philosophy and rhetoric of social justice. “Performance” addresses issues of embodiment, habit and style; “philosophy” addresses cognition, reason and systems of thought; and “rhetoric” addresses audience, language and persuasion. His topics of interest also include activism, community organizing, enactments of resistance and liberation, and social movements. Theoretically, Del Gandio’s work is most directly informed by Italian Autonomism, phenomenology and poststructuralism.

His earlier work has focused on helping activists improve their communication skills and rhetorical strategies, the topic of his first book, Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for 21st Century Activists (2008). It’s also related to a more recent, co-edited book titled Educating for Action: Strategies to Ignite Social Justice (2014). Much of his work is influenced by his own experiences with activism and social movements. Over the past fifteen years, Del Gandio has participated in the antiwar movement, fair trade campaigns, the global justice movement, Latin American solidarity work and more recently, the Occupy movement.

He is also beginning to explore social movement literacy: How do we help educate the general public on how to properly read and understand the nature and function of social movements? Del Gandio envisions that as a public pedagogy project—it exceeds the institutional boundaries of the academy and seeks to have wider social influence.