Welcome

Hi. I’m Michael Collender, the author of A Rhetoric of Love; Volume Two, published by Veritas Press. (At some point I’ll change the side profile picture.)

Before publishing on rhetoric, I taught the subject for over 20 years. Here I hope introduce curious people to how amazing rhetoric can be when we build the whole discipline on the goal of loving other people. I also want to provide teachers and student who are using the Rhetoric of Love series with additional tools and resources.

If you are using my textbook and would like to know more, you’ve come to the right place. Feel free to contact me, especially if you are teaching from the Rhetoric of Love series. I’d be happy to answer your questions as I am able.

When not posting here, I teach rhetoric, psychology, economics and film studies Veritas Scholars Academy. These disciplines may seem unrelated. In A Rhetoric of Love: Volume Two I show how they interconnect. Psychology studies the internal process of human emotion, thought and decision-making. Economics studies the way that social communities understand value and make decisions through the mediation of a symbol, money. Visual and audio media mediates the way that we share messages today. Rhetoric is the study and practice of persuasion through human communication. To be a competent rhetorician in the 21st Century, one needs to know how these fields relate to one another.

I also mentor Christian leaders and pastors in theology and leadership at Redemption Seminary.

Before teaching at these two institutions, I taught philosophy and leadership studies, at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels, at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, for over a decade. I also had a fun little stint researching and lecturing at US Joint Forces Command’s Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk, VA, on strategy and leadership. I was a Visiting Fellow of the Philosophy Institute of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. I earned a D.Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, working on the problem of interpreting and modeling complex natural and social systems. I also recently finished a second doctorate (Theology) at the University of South Africa focusing on wisdom and empirical psychology.

I’m passionate about recovering the ancient discipline of wisdom, and I love exploring the pursuit of wisdom with students and friends. Thanks for visiting my internet home for my work on rhetoric.