M. Elizabeth Thorpe

is a professor of rhetoric at SUNY Brockport in New York.Her expertise is in free speech and constitutive rhetoric. She received her PhD from Texas A&M University in Rhetoric and Public Affairs and has been an active teacher and scholar since 2011. She is an award-winning teacher and is co-author of one of the most well-regarded textbooks on rhetorical theory and the history of rhetoric.

Dr. Thorpe believes rhetoric is meant to help us understand everyday life. Her teaching, her public scholarship, and her research are all designed to show how rhetorical theories and ideas help us understand the world in which we live. It is a fundamental, not an elite, discipline.