Center for Metanoia Studies (Centre d'Etudes Interdisciplinaires de la Métanoïa)

Adam Ellwanger is full professor of English at the University of Houston – Downtown, where he teaches rhetoric and writing. In his book Metanoia: Rhetoric, Authenticity, and the Transformation of the Self (Penn State University Press, 2020) he argues that Western culture is in a moment when wholly new kinds of personal transformations are possible, but authentic transformation requires both personal testimony and public recognition. Adam Ellwanger takes a distinctly rhetorical approach to analyzing how the personal and the public relate to an individual’s transformation and develops a new vocabulary that enables a critical assessment of the concept of authenticity.

The concept of metanoia is central to this project. Charting the history of metanoia from its original use in the classical tradition to its adoption by early Christians as a term for religious conversion, Ellwanger shows that metanoia involves a change within a person that results in a truer version of him- or herself—a change in character or ethos. He then applies this theory to our contemporary moment, finding that metanoia provides unique insight into modern forms of self-transformation. Drawing on ancient and medieval sources, including Thucydides, Plato, Paul the Apostle, and Augustine, as well as contemporary discourses of self-transformation, such as the public testimonies of Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal, Ellwanger elucidates the role of language in signifying and authenticating identity.

Timely and original, Ellwanger’s study formulates a transhistorical theory of personal transformation of interest to scholars working in social theory, philosophy, rhetoric, and the history of Christianity.