Faculty
Faculty in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication do theoretical, empirical, and applied work on wide-ranging topics including visual communication; technology-assisted learning; usability research design, testing, and evaluation; electronic information design; marketing communication; computer games design and the analysis of computer-games interfaces; the history and theory of rhetoric (including visual rhetoric; and the rhetorics of public memory and national identity); media studies; interaction design and multimedia art; computer animation and hypermedia interface design; computer-supported collaborative learning; communication on the internet; social, psychological, and affective approaches to HCI; HCI interfaces for the visually impaired; children's technology; cultural studies and intercultural communication; health communication; themed environments; literature and science; literacy; communication in organizations; writing in the professions and in non-academic settings; and the advancement of women in the academy.
Many of our faculty consult in business and government, where they use their knowledge of theory and research to solve specific problems in written, spoken, and computer-mediated communication. LL&C faculty are active in professional organizations, having served as national or regional officers of such organizations as the National and International Communication Associations (NCA, ICA), Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE Professional Communication Society, the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA), the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), the IGDA (International Game Developers Association), the Digital Government Conference, the Popular Culture Association, and the Academy of Management. LL&C faculty routinely travel to conferences and would be happy to talk with prospective graduate students who may be in the area.
Finally, LL&C faculty serve on editorial boards of major presses (such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the State University of New York) and are associated with a number of professional journals. In fact, The Journal of Technical Writing and Communication and The Electronic Journal of Communication were established at Rensselaer.
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Select LL&C faculty are also featured on academia.edu, a site that connects academics from around the world.
Professor
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Lee Odell
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Composition theory and research; integrating visual and verbal information; writing in nonacademic settings; writing in engineering; rethinking...
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Patricia Search
M.A., Goddard College
Visual design theory and practice; interaction design and multimedia art; computer animation and hypermedia interface design; indigenous knowledge and...
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Merrill Whitburn
Ph.D., University of Iowa
History and teaching of technical communication; history of rhetoric; rhetoric bibliography; history of English studies.
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James P. Zappen
Ph.D., University of Missouri
Contemporary rhetorical theory; digital rhetoric/digital media; design and implementation of community information systems.
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Associate Professor
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Audrey Bennett
M.F.A., Graphic Design, Yale University
Theory and research on the design of images for culturally-specific and cross-cultural communication.
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June Deery
D.Phil., Oxford University
Media studies; television and new media; advertising and culture; popular culture; utopian literature; literature and science.
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Ellen Esrock
Ph.D., New York University
Cognitive/neuropsychological approaches to literature and visual art; theory of literature; theory and history of photography; modern and contemporary...
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Tamar Gordon
Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley
Religion and media; ethnographic methods; discourse analysis; documentary theory; visual culture; themed environments; South Pacific and U.S.
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Ekaterina Haskins
Ph.D., University of Iowa
Rhetorical theory and history, visual rhetoric, and rhetorics of public memory and national identity.
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Clinical Associate Professor
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Roger Grice
Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Information usability; human-computer interaction; communicating on the WWW; usability testing and evaluation; analysis of interactive interfaces...
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Barbara Lewis
Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
M.A. in English Literature, Syracuse University
Composition theory and research; writing center theory and research; theory and practice of peer tutoring; the function of writing in specific...
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Paul Miyamoto
M.F.A., Otis Art Institute
Visual communication design theory and practice; exploration of paint-based medium as an expressive art form.
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Assistant Professor
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Janice Fernheimer
Ph.D and M.A. in English, University of Texas at Austin
B.A., English, University of Maryland, College Park
Rhetorical theory; history of rhetoric; Jewish rhetorical theory and history; Perelman Studies; nineteenth-century African-American rhetoric...
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Nathan G. Freier
Ph.D., University of Washington
B.A., B.S., University of Washington
Children's technology; value sensitive design; human-computer interaction; human-robot interaction; social and moral development; cross-cultural...
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Carlos Godoy
Ph.D., U. of Southern California
J.D., U. of California, Berkeley
Social-psychological consequences of human interaction with media; health communication; message framing; developmental factors in risk-taking...
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Clinical Assistant Professor
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Michael Lynch
Ph.D., University of Connecticut
B.S., Electrical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Interactive storytelling, especially the design of better game world and story world characters through the use of appropriate cognitive...
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Professor Emeritus
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S. Michael Halloran
Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Memory studies; the role of museums and historical artifacts in preserving collective memory; historical sites as sites of rhetorical education and...
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