Australasian Animal Studies Association

Muller, Dr Marek

S. Marek Muller
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Assistant Professor of Communication Studies

Texas State University

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Dr. S. Marek Muller was born and raised in Denver, CO. Since then, they have lived and taught all around the world in locations ranging from Muncie, Indiana to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. They received their PhD in Communication from the University of Utah. Dr. Muller is a rhetorician concerned with the many competing (and often contradicting) discourses of animal rights & welfare. They study how the pernicious ideology of “speciesism” manifests in language and how that language is used to justify the exploitation of nonhuman animals. Their work is most concerned with the intersections of the global animal rights movement with human-oriented political & justice movements. By examining the intersections of animalization, dehumanization, speciesism, and other oppressive -isms, Dr. Muller uses prescriptive rhetorical methods to suggest ethics, policies, and linguistic shifts conducive to total liberation and multispecies justice.

Outputs

• Muller, S. M. (2023). Dairy Pride: Hypocognitive Rhetoric and the Battle for Dairy’s Name. Environmental Communication, 17(8), 975–990.
• Rooney, D., & Muller, S. M. (2023). Woke Sausages at the Cracker Barrel: Gastronativism and the Synecdochic Politics of Plant-based Meat. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 26(3).
• Muller, S. M. (2022). Got Autism? PETA and the Rhetoric of Eco-Ableism. In Vegans on speciesism and ableism: Ecoability voices for disability and animal justice. New York, NY, USA: Peter Lang.
• Muller, S. M. (2022). Monkey Business in a Kangaroo Court: Reimagining Naruto v Slater as a Litigious Event. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 25(1), 31–59.
• Muller, S. M., & McNeill, Z. (2021). Toppling the Temple of Grandin: Autistic-Animal Analogies and the Ableist-Speciesist Nexus. Rhetoric, Society & Culture, 1(2), 195–225.
• Muller, S. M. (2021). Carnistic Colonialism: A Rhetorical Dissection of Bushmeat During the 2014 Ebola Outbreak. Frontiers in Communication, (6), 656431.
• Muller, S. M. (2021). Archival Mocking As Feminist Praxis: A Rhetorical Repurposing of A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. Women’s Studies in Communication, 44(1), 23–43.
• Muller, S. M. (2021). Companion Cyborgs: Untethering Discourses About Wolf-Hybrids. Environmental Communication, 99–114.
• Muller, S. M. (2021). Personal affairs: Litigating nonhuman animal personhood in the Anthropocene. In Intimate Relations: Communicating in the Anthropocene. New York, NY, USA: Lexington Press.
• Muller, S. M. (2021). Living material: European and human supremacy in ivory exhibitions. In Terrible beauty: Elephant – human – ivory (pp. 178–186). Germany: Hirmer Publishing.
• Muller, S. M. (2020). Impersonating Animals: Rhetoric, Ecofeminism, and Animal Rights Law. East Lansing, MI, USA: Michigan State University Press.
• Hasian, M., & Muller, S. M. (2019). Decolonizing conservationist hero narratives: a critical genealogy of William T. Hornaday and colonial conservation rhetorics. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 27(4), 284–296.
• Muller, S. M. (2018). Zombification, social death, and the slaughterhouse: US industrial practices of livestock slaughter. American Studies, 57(3), 81–101.
• Muller, S. M. (2017). For the good of the species: Gary Francione and the omnipresence of eugenics in animal rights rhetoric. Communication Studies, 68(5), 588–606.
• Muller, S. M. (2017). Elephant Tracings: A Critical Animal/Postcolonial Genealogy of the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 14(2), 5–41.

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