Faculty

William Wiethoff

Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of Communication and Culture, Adjunct Professor of the Institute for Medieval Studies, and L216 Faculty

Phone: (812) 855-9046
Email:wiethoff@indiana.edu
Office: 800 E. Third Street, Room 233
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, by appt only

Ph.D., Universtiy of Michigan, 1974
J.D., Indiana University, 1985

Professor Wiethoff earned a Ph.D. in Speech at the University of Michigan and a J.D. at the Indiana University School of Law.  He writes books and articles about the white American experience of African slavery in the colonial and antebellum South.  He teaches undergraduate courses in speechwriting and legal rhetoric.

Representative publications include the following:

A Peculiar Humanism.  Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

The Insolent Slave.  Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.

Crafting the Plantation Overseer’s Image.  Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2006.                   

I’m married to Carolyn Wiethoff, a Management  Professor, and we live near Lake Monroe.  I was born and raised in Detroit and obtained my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.  I taught in New York City for two years before joining the Indiana University faculty.  Along the way I helped raise two daughters.  After obtaining my J.D. from Indiana University, I practiced law part-time for several years while remaining an IU faculty member.  I stopped practicing law in order to publish three  books on the American experience of African slavery.  Teaching “Crisis Management and Speech-Communication” has now become my favorite project.