Michael J. Steudeman studies the rhetoric of education policy in the United States. His research considers how national education discourses reframe social problems, cultivate feelings of national belonging, and adjudicate exclusions from public life. In his book Absence of National Feeling: Education Debates in the Reconstruction Congress (University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming in 2025), Steudeman analyzes the central role that schools played in the idealistic visions and tragic compromises of Reconstruction Era legislators. In addition to studying educational rhetoric, Steudeman also writes about topics of neurodiversity, demagoguery, and presidential rhetoric. His research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and History of Education Quarterly. He teaches courses on a range of topics, including Landmark Speeches, Argumentation, Rhetorics of Public Policy, and Rhetorical Criticism.