ROBERT TALISSE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director of College Facilities
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- Representative Publications
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- Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education / Principal Senior Lecturer in English
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- Acting Director of Undergraduate Studies
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- Assistant Dean for Graduate Education & Strategic Initiatives
- Research Assistant Professor & Assistant Director of the Mellon Partners for Humanities Education Program
- Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies
ANGELA SUTTON is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the Assistant Director of the Mellon Partners for Humanities Education Program, working with Dean of Academic Affairs Bonnie Dow. Sutton is also Assistant Dean of Graduate Education & Strategic Initiatives for the College of Arts & Science and the Director of the Fort Negley Descendants Project, an oral history archive of the descendants of the enslaved who built and defended a local Civil War fortification on the UNESCO Slave Route. She has also managed projects and data with the Slave Societies Digital Archive at Vanderbilt. Her work on the intersections between slavery, memory, and the digital has appeared in The Historical Journal, the Afro-Hispanic Review, archipelagos, and Slavery & Abolition.
Education
M.A., Ph.D., 2014, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Department of History
B.A., 2006, University of Stirling, Scotland, Departments of History & Religious Studies
Job Titles:
- Digital Communications Content Strategist
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- Senior Administrative Officer for Humanities
BOHYEONG KIM is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, and affiliated with the Department of Asian Studies. As a scholar of critical media and cultural studies with a particular emphasis on Korea and East Asia, Professor Kim's research focuses primarily on the relationship between the media, culture, and the capitalist economy. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Cultural Studies, Television & New Media, Media, Culture & Society, and International Journal of Communication. She is currently completing a book entitled Critically Capitalist: The Spirit of Asset Capitalism in South Korea, which presents an ethnography of South Korea's aspiring asset owners to theorize "critical capitalism" as a simultaneous critique and legitimation of capitalism.
Job Titles:
- Dean of Academic Affairs / Professor of Communication Studies
- Professor & Dean of Academic Affairs
- Professor of Communication Studies
BONNIE J. DOW is Professor of Communication Studies and Dean of Academic Affairs for the College of Arts & Science. She is the author of Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on the Network News (University of Illinois Press, 2014) and Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women's Movement Since 1970 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). She is co-editor (with Julia T. Wood) of The Sage Handbook of Gender and Communication (2006) and a co-editor of The Aunt Lute Anthology of U.S. Women Writers, Volume One: 17th -19th Centuries (Aunt Lute Books, 2004). Dow's research interests include the rhetoric and representation of the first and second waves of feminism in the United States.
Education
Ph.D., 1990, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Department of Communication Studies.
M.A., 1987, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Department of Communication Studies
B.A., 1985, Baylor University, Waco, TX, Department of Communication Studies
Job Titles:
- Professor of Political Science, Professor of Philosophy, Affiliated Faculty of Women 's and Gender Studies / Principal Investigator for the Global Feminist Collaborative
Professor Ackerly's research interests include democratic theory, feminist methodologies, human rights, social and environmental justice. She integrates into her theoretical work empirical research on activism. Her publications include Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism (Cambridge 2000), Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference (Cambridge 2008), and Doing Feminist Research with Jacqui True (Palgrave Macmillan2010). She is currently working on the intersection of global economic, environmental, and gender justice. She teaches courses on feminist theory, feminist research methods, human rights, contemporary political thought, and gender and the history of political thought. She is the winner of the Graduate Teaching Award and the Margaret Cuninggim Mentoring Prize. She is the founder of the Global Feminisms Collaborative, a group of scholars and activists developing ways to collaborate on applied research for social justice. She advises academics and donors on evaluation, methodology, and the ethics of research. She serves the profession through committees in her professional associations including the American Political Science Association (APSA), International Studies Association (ISA), and the Association for Women's Rights and Development. She has been a member of the editorial board for Politics and Gender (Journal of the APSA, Women and Politics Section) since its founding.
Specializations
Political Theory, Democratic Theory, Cross-Cultural Human Rights Theory, Feminism, Social Criticism
Representative publications
Ackerly, Brooke. "Human Rights Enjoyment in Theory and Activism."Human Rights Review 12 (2011), 2: 221-239.
Ackerly, Brooke, and Jacqui True. Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science. Palgrave Macmillan (2010).
Ackerly, Brooke, and Katy Attanasi. "Global Feminisms: Theory and Ethics for Studying Gendered Injustice." New Political Science 31 (2009): 543-555.
Ackerly, Brooke. Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism. Cambridge University Press (2008).
Ackerly, Brooke. Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference. Cambridge University Press (2008).
Ackerly, Brooke, and Michael P. Vandenbergh. "Climate Change Justice: The Challenge for Global Governance." Georgetown International Environmental Law Journal 20(2008): 553-571.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education Director of Pre - Law Advising / Principal Senior Lecturer in Political Science
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- Director of Pre - Major Advising Resource Center
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- Philosophy Emeritus, Research Professor of Philosophy
Professor Scott is currently working on a study of the functions of sensibility in the formation of ethical imperatives and judgments.
Professor Scott taught at Vanderbilt from 1966 through 1993. While here, he was Chair of the Philosophy Department from 1980 to 1990, directed the Mellon Regional Faculty Development Program (1979-1987) and directed the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities from its inception in 1987 to 1993. At Penn State, Professor Scott held the Edwin Erle Sparks Professorship in Philosophy, was the Interim Head of the Philosophy Department in 2002-3, and was Graduate Admissions Officer from 1994 to 2002. He returned to Vanderbilt in 2005 to found and direct the Vanderbilt University Center for Ethics. He now teaches full time in the Department.
Job Titles:
- Cindy Kam, Dean of Faculty Affairs
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- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor of Communication Studies
CLAIRE SISCO KING is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Chair of the Cinema and Media Arts program. She is a scholar of media and visual culture, with a particular emphasis on the study of gender and sexuality. Her book, Washed in Blood: Male Sacrifice, Trauma, and the Cinema (Rutgers University, 2011), which was named an Outstanding Book of the Year in 2013 by Critical Cultural Studies division of the National Communication Association, addresses the intersections between cinematic violence, masculinity, and discourses of civic identity. Her work has been published in numerous journals in the fields of communication and media studies, and she is currently writing a new book on celebrity culture, gender, and race. King is the Editor of Women's Studies in Communication, a peer-reviewed, feminist journal addressing the relationships between communication and gender.
Education
B.A. Davidson College, 1999
M.A., Ph.D. Indiana University, 2001, 2006
Job Titles:
- Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science / Professor of Political Science
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- Senior Lecturer & Director of Internships
- Senior Lecturer and Director of Internships in Communication Studies
COURTNEY CAUDLE TRAVERS is Senior Lecturer and Director of Internships in Communication Studies. Her research and teaching focus on the merger between American political and popular culture, particularly during the early Cold War era. She has co-authored an essay on metaphor in Style, and her current project examines Jacqueline Kennedy's visual rhetorical influence on the Kennedy administration's presidential persona.
Education
B.A. English, University of Florida (2007)
M.A. Speech Communication, University of Georgia (2009)
PhD. Communication, University of Illinois (2015)
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean / Senior Lecturer in Earth & Environmental Sciences
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- Executive Coordinator for the Dean
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- Administrative Specialist
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- Dean of Graduate Education & Research
Dean Moore has been appointed Traveling Lecturer by the Jane Austen Society of North America for the 2021-22 academic year. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Nashville Ballet and was Senior Warden of the Vestry at Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal) in 2017-18.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Philosophy
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- Senior Lecturer and Director of Lambda Pi Eta
DUSTIN WOOD is Senior Lecturer and Director of Lambda Pi Eta. His teaching and research focus on religious rhetoric and communication, law, and the First Amendment.
Education
B.A., Western Kentucky University, 2007
M.A., University of Cincinnati, 2009
Ph.D., Texas A&M University, 2013
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Philosophy
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- Senior Administrative Officer for Sponsored Research
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- Principle Senior Lecturer
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- Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Social and Natural Sciences / Professor of Economics, Professor of Philosophy ( Affiliated )
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- Senior Administrative Officer for Capital Projects, Space Planning and Facilities
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- Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Classics
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- Chief Communications Officer
- COMMUNICATIONS
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- Associate Professor of Philosophy
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- Digital Communications Specialist
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- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor of Communication Studies
- Dir. of Undergraduate Studies
ISAAC WEST is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies. He is also affiliate faculty with the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies. Professor West's research focuses primarily on legal rhetorics and their role in constituting us as citizens of states, nations, and the world. His first book, Transforming Citizenships: Transgender Articulations of the Law (NYU Press, 2014), engages trans advocacy and activism to demonstrate how these citizenship claims can queer legal norms and conventions. Transforming Citizenships was a finalist for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies. Professor West has also written related essays about centrality of gender and sexuality to our understanding of citizenship, including how bakers have employed religious freedom as a justification for not treating everyone equally, the ethics and appropriateness of employing "like race" analogies in queer advocacy, and how coming out narratives are produced and mean different things to different audiences.
Professor West is currently working on two major projects. The first project is a book-length study of true crime titled The Serial Effect: True Crime and Contemporary American Culture. The Serial Effect historicizes current practices in true crime entertainment to trace the evolution of its recurrent tropes and to identify emergent structures of feeling about criminal justice in the United States. As for the second project, Professor West is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Queer Studies and Communication, which will be composed of 120+ essay-length entries outlining the past, present, and future of these fields of study. For more information on the encyclopedia, please consult the following call for papers. If you are interested in contributing to the volume, please contact Professor West directly via email.
Education
Ph.D. Communication and Culture, Indiana University, 2008
M.A. Speech Communication, Kansas State University, 2001
B.A. Speech Communication and History, Kansas State University, 1999
Job Titles:
- Lead Vanderbilt Engineering Center Focused on Transportation Research
Janey Camp to lead Vanderbilt Engineering center focused on transportation research
Job Titles:
- Department Chair
- Professor & Chair
- Professor and Chair of Communication Studies
JEFF BENNETT is Professor and Chair of Communication Studies. His research tends to
focus on two primary areas of study: the rhetoric of health and medicine and LGBTQ
studies. His most recent research project focused on the rhetoric of diabetes
management. In his book, Managing Diabetes: The Cultural Politics of Disease, he
argues that popular anecdotes, media representations, and communal myths are as
meaningful as medical and scientific understandings of disease when contemplating
diabetes' public character. Bennett examines the confusing and contradictory public
depictions of diabetes to demonstrate how "management" is not only clinical, but also
cultural. Bennett has lived with type-one diabetes since 2004 and speaks from personal
experience about the many ways diabetes is enlivened in the popular imaginary.
He is also the author of Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and
Resistance, which scrutinizes the federal donor deferral policy that prevents men who
have sex with men from donating blood.
He is currently working on a number of research publications. The topics of those
essays include a sit-in by disability activists at the
Tennessee State Capitol, the memory politics of the so-called Culture Wars, and a series of papers about COVID-19.
You can learn more about his research here.
Education
B.A., Speech Communication, Wayne State University
M.A., Communication Studies, Northern Illinois University
Ph.D., Communication and Culture, Indiana University
Job Titles:
- Faculty & Academic Affairs Coordinator
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- Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
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- Senior Administrative Officer for Natural Sciences
Job Titles:
- Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science / Professor of Political Science
John Geer, Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science
Professor of Political Science
Co-Director, Vanderbilt Poll
404 Buttrick Hall
john.g.geer@vanderbilt.edu
Job Titles:
- Centennial Professor of Philosophy
- Professor
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- Senior Lecturer and Director of Debate
JOHN KOCH is Senior Lecturer and Director of Debate. His primary research interests include argumentation and debate, citizenship, democratic theory, and presidential rhetoric. Other areas of interest are public memory and the intersection of political culture, rhetoric, and sports.
Education
B.A., Capital University, 2004
M.A., Wayne State University, 2011
Ph.D., Wayne State University, 2016
Job Titles:
- Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Social and Natural Sciences / Professor of Economics, Professor of Philosophy ( Affiliated )
Job Titles:
- DEVELOPMENT & ALUMNI RELATIONS
- Senior Associate Dean & Executive Director, Strategic Initiatives
Job Titles:
- Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education / Principal Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Media Arts
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- Chief Business Officer
- FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION
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- Associate Professor of Philosophy
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- Associate Director of Leadership Annual Giving
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- Associate Professor of Philosophy
- Director of Graduate Studies
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- Professor
- Professor Emeritus
KASSIAN KOVALCHECK, Professor Emeritus, a native of Pennsylvania, graduated from Wabash College in 1965. He received his MA from Indiana University in 1967 and his Ph.D. in 1972.
Since coming to Vanderbilt University in 1969, Professor Kovalcheck has taught Public Speaking, Rhetorical Criticism, Argumentation and Debate, Persuasion, and a popular special topics seminar on the Rhetoric of Irish Nationalism. He served as Director of Forensics and directed a successful intercollegiate debate program from 1972 to 1983. In 1987, he was awarded the Ellen Gregg Ingalls Prize for exceptional teaching, and also received the Ernest Jones Undergraduate Advising Award. He was awarded the Alumni Education Award in 2001 and the Thomas Jefferson Distinguished Service Award in 2011. He was Chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Theatre for 13 years, Parliamentarian of the Faculty Senate, and has served 4 times as chair of the Faculty Council of the College of Arts and Science.
Kovalcheck's scholarly research has focused on argumentation and debate, the rhetoric of Irish nationalism and First Amendment issues. He has published in the British Journal of Sociology. His speech on diplomacy and liberty is included in Representative American Speeches. Kovalcheck has delivered papers at international conferences in Ireland and Scotland.
Education
B.A. Wabash College, 1965
M.A., Ph.D. Indiana University, 1967, '72
Kelly Oliver is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.
She is the author of fifteen scholarly books, including, Response Ethics (Roman & Littlefield 2018), Carceral Humanitarianism: The Logic of Refugee Detention (University of Minnesota 2017); Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape, (Columbia 2016); Earth and World: Philosophy After the Apollo Missions, (Columbia 2015). Technologies of Life and Death: From Cloning to Capital Punishment (Fordham 2013); Knock me up, Knock me down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood Film (Columbia 2012); Animal Lessons: How They Teach us to be Human (Columbia 2009); Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex and the Media (2007); The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Theory of Oppression (Minnesota 2004); Noir Anxiety: Race, Sex, and Maternity in Film Noir (Minnesota 2002); and perhaps her best known work, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minnesota 2001). Her work has been translated into eight languages. Most recently, she has published three novels in The Jessica James, Cowgirl Philosopher, Mystery Series.
She has published in The New York Times, and has been interviewed on ABC television news, various radio programs, and Canadian Broadcasting network.
Research Area
I recently participated in a seminar at Columbia University on Nietzsche and Irigaray. In October 2009, I gave a keynote address at the 25th Anniversary Hypatia Conference in Seattle. The lecture is available as a podcast or you can watch it (and other videos) on my vimeo channel. I was also recently interviewed on the ABC News show "World View." That interview, which focuses on women in the military and my book Women as Weapons of War, can be viewed on the ABC website.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Development
Job Titles:
- Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
Job Titles:
- Professor of Philosophy, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities
- Professor of Philosophy, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities / Research Area
His philosophical interests center on metaphysics and ethics, and he has paid special attention over the years to Islamic and Jewish philosophical thought and their creative interactions. Goodman was a winner of the American Philosophical Association Baumgardt Memorial Prize and was a rare Humanities Recipient of Vanderbilt University's top research award, the Earl Sutherland prize.
He has written philosophical essays on most of the major figures of Islamic and Jewish philosophy and on a variety of topics in political philosophy, biophilosophy, and the theory of knowledge and culture. He serves on the editorial boards of History of Philosophy Quarterly and Medieval Philosophy and Theology. He is an associate editor of Asian Philosophy. He has served as Vice President and Program Chair of the Institute for Islamic/Judaic Studies. He has also served as program chair for the APA panels of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy. He was Jewish Philosophy subject editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and is a fellow of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy.
Professor Goodman has also contributed to the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, the Blackwell's Companion to the Philosophy of Religion, the Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, as well as other works of reference. In 2008 Oxford University Press published Goodman's Gifford lectures under the title Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.
Job Titles:
- Administrative Specialist
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- Visual Communications Content Strategist
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- Acting Director of Undergraduate Studies
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- Is Director of Forensics and Principal Senior Lecturer. Her Primary Research Interest Involves Argumentation and Debate
- Principal Senior Lecturer & Director of Forensics
Education
B.A., M.A. Mississippi State University, 1983, 1985
ML SANDOZ is Director of Forensics and Principal Senior Lecturer. Her primary research interest involves argumentation and debate.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Development
Job Titles:
- Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
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- Associate Director of Development
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- Associate Director of Development, Parent Engagement
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- Assistant Professor of Philosophy
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- Academic & Educational Support Program Coordinator
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- Director of Faculty Affairs
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- Professor of Philosophy
- Professor of Philosophy / Research Area
Professor Hodges works in the areas of Wittgenstein, American Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Education.
Job Titles:
- Senior Administrative Officer for Social Sciences
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- Assistant Director of Leadership Annual Giving
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- Senior Lecturer
- Senior Lecturer & on - Campus Debate Initiatives
NEIL BUTT is Senior Lecturer and in charge of On-Campus Debate Initiatives. His primary research areas include argumentation and debate, and argumentation and debate pedagogy. He is also interested in argument theory, classical rhetoric, feminist criticism, interpersonal and small group communication, persuasion, political communication, public policy, and social movements.
Education
B.A., George Mason University, 1993
M.A.I.S., George Mason University, 2000
Ph.D., Wayne State University, 2010
Job Titles:
- Administration
- Chairman of the Philosophy Department
PAUL STOB is Professor of Communication Studies and Chair of the Program in American Studies. He is also affiliated faculty in the Communication of Science and Technology Program.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director of Development
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- Senior Director of Development
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- Academic Services Coordinator
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- Associate Director of Development
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- Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
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- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate Dean and Director of Undergraduate Education / Principal Senior Lecturer in English
- Senior Associate Dean, College of Arts and Science / Director of Undergraduate Education & Principal Senior Lecturer
Roger E. Moore is Senior Associate Dean, Director of Undergraduate Education, and Principal Senior Lecturer in English at Vanderbilt, where he has taught since 1995. He is responsible for all aspects of the undergraduate curriculum, including development of academic policies, approval of new majors and minors, and support for advising. A specialist in early-modern English literature and religion, Dean Moore is the author of scholarly articles on Christopher Marlowe, Sir Philip Sidney, and Geoffrey Chaucer, among others, in SEL, Religion and Literature and Studies in Philology. His most recent work explores nostalgia for monasteries and the monastic life in England from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, work that has inspired three articles on Jane Austen and his book, Jane Austen and the Reformation: Remembering the Sacred Landscape (Ashgate/Routledge 2016). The recipient of the Harriet S. Gilliam Award for Excellence in Teaching (2003) and the Ernest A. Jones Faculty Adviser Award (2008), he teaches courses in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature and the English Reformation as well as introductory writing courses and surveys of British literature.
Job Titles:
- Dean of Strategic Initiatives
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- Associate Professor of Philosophy
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- Chairman of the Philosophy Department
- Professor
- Professor of Philosophy
- Professor of Philosophy / Chair of the Philosophy Department
Job Titles:
- Professor of Political Science, Professor of Philosophy
W. James Booth's current research is focused on memory, identity and justice. His most recent book, Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice, is centered around those issues, and several articles further develop and explore them in the context of race in America and violence in Northern Ireland. Booth has also written extensively on economics and justice, (Households: On the Moral Architecture of the Economy), and on topics in the history of political theory, including ancient Greek economic thought, Kant's philosophy of history and politics, and Marx's understanding and critique of capitalism. His articles have been published in scholarly journals in the US, Britain, France and Germany. Before coming to Vanderbilt, Booth was on the faculties of McGill University and Duke. At Vanderbilt, Booth teaches courses in the history of political thought, religion and politics, and graduate and undergraduate seminars on topics in contemporary theory.
Specializations
Political Theory, Kant, Marx, Memory and Identity
Representative publications
"Maîtres chez nous: Some questions about culture and continuity. A response to Alan Patten's "Rethinking culture: the social lineage account." American Political Science Review 107(2013)
Booth, W. James. "From this Far Place: On Justice and Absence," American Political Science Review 105(2011): 750-764.
Booth, W. James. "The Color of Memory: Reading Race with Ralph Ellison." Political Theory 36(2008): 683-707.
Booth, W. James. "The Work of Memory: Time, Identity, and Justice."Social Research 75(2008): 237-262.
Booth, W. James. Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice. New York: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Booth, W. James. "The Unforgotten. Memories of Justice." American Political Science Review 95(2001): 777-791.
Job Titles:
- Cindy Kam, Dean of Faculty Affairs