Students in the Program

Queer Rhetorics, Material Rhetorics, and Embodied Rhetorics

A life-long local, who grew up in McLean, Virginia and now lives in Washington, DC, Jay has deep roots in the region. Out of college, he worked for two years as a Program Instructor for the Close Up Foundation, a Washington-based civics education program that welcomes students from around the country and uses the capital region as a living classroom. Then, after a promising but unhappy stint in law school, Jay completely shifted gears to work for over 12 years in professional theatre, performing throughout Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland, and as far away as Lublin, Poland. After a short hiatus from theatre to start a family, Jay briefly returned to the stage before leaving theatre for academia in 2016. Jay continues to flex his artistic muscles, however, staging Shakespeare in his backyard for his grade school-aged twins and their friends and families.