Faculty | Robert Terrill

Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Culture

Email: rterrill@indiana.edu
Phone: 855-0118
Office: 231

Education

Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1996

Background

Professor Terrill's teaching and research interests include African American rhetoric, rhetorical criticism of popular film, and discourses of dissent. He was recognized as Teacher of the Year by the Communication Studies Honor Society, Lambda Pi Eta, in 2003.

Courses Recently Taught

C205, Introduction to Communication and Culture
C130, Public Speaking for Honors
C511, Pre-Modern Rhetorical Theory
C615, Rhetoric of Protest in America

Publication Highlights

“Colonizing the Borderlands: Shifting Circumference in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 86 (2000): 67-85.
“Conservative Innovation: Stephen A. Douglas and the Northern Democrats.” A Rhetorical History of the United States: Vol 4. Civil War Rhetoric. Ed. D. Zarefsky and M. Leff. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, in press.
"Consistency and Change in the Rhetoric of Stephen A. Douglas.” With David Zarefsky. Southern Communication Journal 63 (1997): 179-196. Earned the “Rose B. Johnson” in award in 1998 as the Top Paper published in Southern Communication Journal 63 (1997).
"Irony, Silence, and Time: Frederick Douglass on the Fifth of July.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003): 216-234.
Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgment. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004.
"Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 4 (2001): 25-53.
"Put on a Happy Face: Batman as Schizophrenic Savior.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79 (1993): 319-335. Rpt. in Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Ed. S. K. Foss. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1996. 509-530.
"Spectacular Repression: Sanitizing the Batman.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (2000): 493-509.
“W. E. B. Du Bois, Double Consciousness, and Pan-Africanism in the Progressive Era.” With Eric Watts. A Rhetorical History of the United States: Vol 6. Rhetoric and Reform in the Progressive Era. Ed. J. M. Hogan. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002. 269-309.

Selected Honors and Awards

His book on Malcolm X received the Kohrs-Campbell Prize in Rhetorical Criticism in 2005.