Featured Participants

G. Thomas Goodnight is a Professor at the University of Southern California. Having directed 28 dissertations, he has been accorded career awards in Rhetoric and Communication Theory by the NCA and been named among the five top scholars in argumentation of the last 50 years by the AFA. Additionally, Goodnight regularly contributes to the Quarterly Journal of Speech, and is the former editor of Argumentation and Advocacy. His current research interests include deliberation and postwar society, science communication, argument and aesthetics, public discourse studies, and communicative reason in controversy. He is also a co-author with Thomas Farrell of a canonical article on the rhetoric of science and technology, "Accidental Rhetoric: The Root Metaphors of Three Mile Island." (Communication Monographs, 1981).

Graham Murdock is a Reader in the Sociology of Culture at Loughborough University. He has written extensively on the organisation of the mass media industries; and on the press and television coverage of terrorism, riots and other political events. His current work is on advertising and on the social impact of new communications technologies. Recent work includes, Media in the Age of Marketisation (2007), Digital Dynamics (2010), The Idea of the Public Sphere (2010), The Blackwell Companion to the Political Economy of Communication (2010) and "Shifting anxieties, altered media: Risk communication in networked times" (Catalan Jornal of Communication and Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 2. 2010).

Matthew Nisbet is an Associate Professor in the Communication Department at American University. Nisbet's research has appeared at high-impact disciplinary journals such as Public Opinion Quarterly, Public Understanding of Science, and Communication Research as well as interdisciplinary outlets such as Science, Environment, Nature Biotechnology, and BMC Public Health. Nisbet's current research examining the debates over climate change and energy policy is funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In 2011, he was named a Google Science Communication Fellow.

Tarla Rai Peterson is Professor and Boone and Crockett Chair at Texas A&M University, Guest Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Adjunct Professor at University of Utah. Peterson and her graduate students at these universities study intersections between communication, environmental policy, and democracy. Her research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Swedish Research Council for Environmental and Spatial Planning, and various government agencies (i.e., U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Swedish Nature Management Agency). Peterson’s scholarship includes: Social Movement to address Climate Change: Local Steps for Global Action (2009), Discursive Constructions of Climate Change: Practices of Encoding and Decoding—special issue of Environmental Communication (2009), Green Talk in the White House: The Rhetorical Presidency Encounters Ecology (2004), and Sharing the Earth: The Rhetoric of Sustainable Development (1997). She has published numerous articles in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals. Peterson also maintains an active Theory to Practice Program, including design, facilitation and evaluation of community-based planning efforts related to environmental and energy issues.

Blake Scott is an Affiliated Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. Scott’s research interests in technical communication and the rhetorics of biotechnology aims to develop models of cultural critique and civic engagement. His current research project mobilizes globalization theory to analyze risk management rhetoric around global debates about pharmaceutical access and regulation, among other projects. Scott is the author of Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing (2003) and Service-Learning in Technical and Professional Communication (2003). He is also the editor of Critical Power Tools: Technical Communication and Cultural Studies (2006).

Symposium Organizers

William Kinsella, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, and Director, Program in Science, Technology and Society

Steve Wiley, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, and Director, PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media with CRDM faculty David Berube, Andrew Binder, and Carolyn R. Miller.

Symposium Staff

Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media (CRDM) Doctoral students Chris Cummings (general support), Fernanda Duarte (print materials), Nathan Hulsey (food arrangements), Ashley R. Kelly (website), Maurice Mathis (local arrangements), and Seth Mulliken (video recording and production); program staff Robert Bell and Jan Raymondi.

all site content © 2011 crdm program | last updated 26.3.2011