Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar is a Professor in Rhetoric and Public Culture and the Director of Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University. He is also the Director of Center for Transcultural Studies, an independent scholarly research network concerned with global issues based in Chicago and New York. Gaonkar was closely associated with the influential journal Public Culture from the early 1990s serving in various editorial capacities: associate editor, executive editor, and editor. Gaonkar has two sets of scholarly interests: rhetoric as an intellectual tradition, both its ancient roots and its contemporary mutations; and, global modernities and their impact on the political. He has published numerous essays on rhetoric, including "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science" that was published along with ten critical responses to the essay in a book, Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, edited by Alan G. Gross and William Keith. Gaonkar has edited a series books on global cultural politics: Globaizing American Studies, Alternative Modernities, and Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies. He has also edited several special issues of journals: Laclau's On Populist Reason, Cultures of Democracy, Commitments in a Post-Foundational World, Technologies of Public Persuasion, and New Imaginaries. He is currently working on two edited volumes: Oxford Handbook on Rhetoric and Political Theory and Distribution of the Sensible: Ranciere on Politics and Aesthetics ; and, on a book manuscript on Modernity, Democracy and the Politics of Disorder. Dilip Gaonkar hails from the Ankola region in Karwar district. He is a grandson of SAPA. Gaonkar and Venkanna H. Naik. Gaonkar is married to Sally Ewing, the Associate Dean of Advising and Student Affairs at Northwestern University's School of Communication.
He has also been awarded, the National Communication Association's Golden Anniversary Monographs Award in 1991 and 1994.
Dissertation
Dilip Gaonkar has developed a few works over his career including Aspects of Sophistic Pedagogy. This work was developed while he was attending the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. His dissertation covers the topics of sophists in ancient Greek philosophy, the art of politics, and the upper levels of education of rhetoric. This was Gaonkar's dissertation thesis at the University of Pittsburgh when he was working towards his Ph. D.
