Research
My current scholarship advances the emerging, interdisciplinary study of comparative rhetoric by articulating how the concepts of Otherness and Jewish identity are rhetorically generative. Drawing on rhetorical history and theory, Jewish studies, and critical theory, I attend to the ways in which our meaning-making accounts for the Other—and indeed how we make meaning as Others in multicultural contexts, throughout history, today, and into the future. My research engages cultural artifacts ranging from the ancient and sacred to the contemporary and popular, illuminating the varied ways in which the Jewish tradition is relevant to our diverse society’s struggle to ethically engage with the Other.
Biblical Rhetoric
Encounters with the Divine in the Hebrew Bible
My dissertation, Encounters with the Divine in the Hebrew Bible, uses an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate the Jewish tradition’s significance for rhetoric by analyzing Biblical encounters with the divine—the ultimate Other. I argue that Jewish rhetorics offers a necessary expansion to the Greco-Roman conception of “rhetoric” by providing an example of a covenantal rhetoric, neither appropriative nor obeisant, and utilizing multiple communicative modes in its engagement with the Other. A covenant, I assert, is impossible without a rhetorical relationship—and rhetoric is precisely what is at issue in Biblical encounters with the divine. Performing a number of close rhetorical analyses on Biblical passages significant to Jewish thought, I develop a Jewish rhetorical framework for engaging with the Other—divine and human—as holy.
‘Hadassah, That is Esther:’ Diasporic Rhetoric in the Megillat Esther
“‘Hadassah, That is Esther:’ Diasporic Rhetoric in the Book of Esther” analyzes the rhetorical strategies of Esther as a Jewish woman in the Persian Empire to show how this multiply-marginalized figure became a rhetorical model for Jews throughout the history of the Diaspora. I argue that the unusual text’s inclusion in the canon speaks to the centrality of the Diasporic experience—and the necessity of rhetoric—to the formation of a concept of Jewish peoplehood.
Gellis, Eliza. “‘Hadassah, That is Esther:’ Diasporic Rhetoric in the Megillat Esther.” The Routledge Handbook of Comparative and World Rhetorics, edited by Keith Lloyd, Routledge, 2021, pp. 126 – 133, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367809768.
Rhetorics of Pop Culture
‘Spock’s Jewish Hybridity
I believe that popular culture has a unique opportunity to explore important issues and questions about the human condition in an accessible fashion. In fact, such exploration is often explicitly cited as a goal of science fiction, Star Trek being the example par excellence. My article in a special edition of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, “Spock’s Jewish Hybridity,” shows how Jewish identity manifests as a generative form of Otherness in popular culture. In it, I connect research on Star Trek and hybridity with Jewish studies, showing how Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal of the half-human, half-alien Spock communicates a uniquely Jewish interpretation of hybridity as a form of Otherness. Using Spock as a model, I demonstrate how Jewish identity resists and destabilizes binaries, refiguring the hybrid as something more than the sum of its parts. This research attests to the fact that popular culture’s accessibility is actually a form of attending to the Other, which I argue is one of rhetoric’s “prime directives.”
Gellis, Eliza. “Spock’s Jewish Hybridity.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, 2021, pp. 407 – 433, https://doi.org/10.5325/intelitestud.23.3.0407.
Memes and Crossovers in Tumblr Untamed Fandom Edits
This essay explores multimodality and communal rhetoricity in fandom. Tumblr has historically been a home for transformative fandom. In particular, its image-oriented display has given rise to a visual fandom culture characterized by both GIF making and image editing. This visual fandom culture has engendered a particular genre of meme: screenshots of humorous posts pasted on a thematically-corresponding still or GIF from a movie or TV show for humorous effect.
Gellis, Eliza. “Memes and Crossovers in Tumblr Untamed Fandom Edits.” The Untamed: Some Transcultural and Transformational Perspectives, special issue of InMediaRes, edited by Maria K. Alberto, 26 Feb. 2021, https://mediacommons.org/imr/content/memes-and-crossovers-tumblr-untamed-fandom-edits%E2%80%8E.