Robert Gray Gunderson
(October 3, 1915 -- November 24, 1996)
Robert Gunderson is a hugely influencial figure in the study of American public address and in the history of our department; we find his work also to be strongly confluent with our commitment to the study of Rhetoric and Public Culture.
At Indiana University, Gunderson was a professor in the departments of Speech Communication (now Communication and Culture) and History, served as director of graduate studies for 20 years, and was the founding director of IU's American Studies program. He served as executive vice president of the Speech Communication Association (now NCA), as editor of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, and as interim editor of the Journal of American History. He published 50 articles and two books -- including The Old Gentleman's Convention: The Washington Peace Conference of 1861 (Wisconsin, 1961), a study of peace discourse in a time of impending war. He directed 50 doctoral dissertations, received the Speech Communication Association award for Distinguished Service in 1984, and received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the IU Alumni Association in 1985.
In an essay in Twentieth Century Roots of Rhetorical Studies (Praeger, 2001), Kurt Ritter reports that "perhaps the most important theme of Gunderson's scholarship was his concern that American political rhetoric is debased when powerful economic interests manipulate public opinion" (175). "The thrust of Gunderson's five decades of scholarship," Ritter continues, "was ... [that] for democracy to thrive, educators should distrust the rhetoric of the technical professionals and should teach citizens how to manage their own popular or colloquial rhetoric" (177). Gunderson considered his scholarship to be a form of political advocacy, and indeed had several of his public speeches reproduced in the venerable Vital Speeches of the Day. One such speech -- delivered in 1955, at the height of the McCarthy era -- was titled "Training for an Articulate Democracy"; in it, Ritter notes, Gunderson "lamented the lack of vigorous debate on public issues in the United States" because he feared it would produce a "docile," "scared," and "uninformed" citizenry prone to "cynicism" and susceptible to "demagoguery" (197).
After his retirement he endowed the Virginia Gunderson Award, in honor of his late wife; it is given each year to three graduate students, honoring outstanding work in Communication and Culture, History, and American Studies. Also, each year CMCL awards the Robert G. Gunderson award to recognize outstanding graduate student scholarship.
We are proud to host the Robert G. Gunderson Forum in Rhetoric and Public Culture, inaugurated during the 2007-2008 academic year, as a fitting tribute to Gunderson's contributions to our field, and as an acknowledgement of his continuing influence in our study of Rhetoric and Public Culture.