Have you met with an inexplicable fate?
Do your bones ache? Does your soul bounce between illumination and despair? Hast thee stared too long into the void?
Chances are, you might just be a human. Join Professor Lawrence in his new book, How To Be Human: A Guide for the Age of Machines & Fire.
This digestible, short, accessible book explores what it means to be a temporary creature on a rock flying through the universe. Gather wisdom, courage, and light from the ancient Greeks and Romans, canonical literature, and philosophy.
Subscribe to our Last Bastion newsletter to receive your free e-book, filled with tips, stories, ancient philosophy, and guidance for making it through this often strange, sometimes wonderful life.
Free e-book when you sign up for Professor Lawrence’s folk philosophy newsletter.
Get a free e-book, How To Be Human: A Guide for the Age of Machines & Fire, when you sign up for the Last Bastion newsletter, which features notes, stories, philosophy, and more, straight from the desk of
Professor Lawrence.
More books by Professor Lawrence….
Digital Writing
“Digital Writing will open a lot of eyes to the subtle arts of persuasion employed at every turn of the average person’s daily digital life, arming them with the resource to be more intentional in their participation and more sophisticated in their response.”
― Andrew McLuhan, The McLuhan Institute
Digital Writing: A Guide to Writing for Social Media and the Web
Available as an ebook and in print from:
My book, Digital Writing from Broadview Press (2022) is a rhetorical and ethical perspective on writing for digital media, social media, and the web.
Dr. Lawrence teaches courses such as Technical Writing, Digital Writing, Introduction to Rhetoric, and Advanced Rhetoric: Theory and Practice at the University of Wisconsin - Superior.
Disinformed: The History of Humanity’s Search for the Truth
“For thousands of years, philosophers and rhetoricians have dealt with the question: “What is truth?” In this gripping narrative, Dr. Daniel William Lawrence explores humanity’s troubled relationship with truth, from the propaganda tactics of King Sargon of Akkadia to the sophistication of present day hyper-targeted political advertising on social media. Spanning thousands of years of human history, Dr. Lawrence urges us to fight against disinformation and wrest back control of our minds using the critical toolbox of rhetoric: the ancient, lost art of persuasion laid down long ago by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle…”
Truth
For thousands of years, humans have struggled with the relationship between truth, lies, reality, and language. These issues are exacerbated by global, technological communication. Rhetoric empowers us to make sense of the endless stream of messages in our lives.
Technology
Through the work of thinkers like Heidegger, Manovich, Haraway, and Feenberg, we can seek to understand humanity’s relationship to technology to chart a more democratic and meaningful path forward. Writing, too, is a technology.
Rhetoric
All consciously crafted messages are rhetorical (and perhaps ideological), whether textual, visual, digital, musical, bodily, or otherwise. We cast our meanings outward from our subjective positions toward particular people for particular purposes.
“I shall not just do it. I shall swing a hammer the size of the sun upon it.”
Dr. Dan Lawrence is an American digital media theorist, rhetorician, and writer. He is Associate Professor of Writing and tenured faculty member of the Department of Writing, Language, and Literature at the University of Wisconsin - Superior.
His research appears in Teaching Reading and Writing in the Era of Fake News, Online Credibility and Digital Ethos: Evaluating Computer-Mediated Communication, Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion, among other places.
His books include Digital Writing: A Guide to Writing for Social Media and the Web (Broadview Press, 2022), Disinformed: The History of Humanity’s Search for Truth (2024), and upcoming books on the origins and nature of technology, and a new alternative self-help series.
“The truth is like a lion…”
— St. Augustine of Hippo
Thanks for visiting my website. Here are some ways to find me:
Faculty E-mail: dlawren1@uwsuper.edu
Personal E-mail: dr.dan.lawrence@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdanlawrence/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrDanLawrence
Press/Interviews/Speaking Engagements:
Please contact me directly at dr.dan.lawrence@gmail.com, or see “Press” page on this website.
Learn about the fully online BA in Writing program at UW-Superior, where Professor Lawrence teaches:
https://www.uwsuper.edu/program/writing/