Dawn O. Braithwaite
Interpersonal Communication

Dawn O. Braithwaite is the Willa Cather Professor and Department Chair of Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Braithwaite is the author of 90 articles and co-editor of five books.

Erika Kirby
Organizational Communication

Erika L. Kirby (Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln) is Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Creighton University. A teacher-scholar of organizational communication, she studies the everyday intersections of working and personal life, emphasizing how differing social identities (especially gender) assimilate into/collide with organizations. She teaches courses in organizational communication, work-life communication, communication and social justice, organizational rhetoric, gender communication and research methods. She co-edited Gender Actualized: Cases in Communicatively Constructing Realities with Chad McBride and has published in outlets such as Communication Monographs, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Management Communication Quarterly, and Communication Yearbook. She is Past-President of the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her partner Bob, daughters Meredith and Samantha, and cats Dougie, Darcy and Deena.

Gary Kreps
Health Communication

Gary L. Kreps (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is a University Distinguished Professor at George Mason University, where he Chairs the Department of Communication and Directs the Center for Health and Risk Communication. He studies health communication , health promotion, risk prevention, health disparities, quality of care, health informatics, and social change published in more than 350 books, articles, and chapters. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior and has been recognized with numerous scholarly awards. He has attracted external research funding from many federal agencies, private foundations, and corporations. Before joining the faculty at George Mason University, he served as Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute, Dean of the School of Communication at Hofstra University, Executive Director of the Greenspun School of Communication at UNLV, and as a professor at Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Indiana, and Purdue Universities.

Martin Medhurst
Rhetoric of Religion

Martin J. Medhurst (Ph.D., Penn State, 1980) is Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Communication, and Professor of Political Science, at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He is the author or editor of thirteen books including, most recently, The Prospect of Presidential Rhetoric (with James Arnt Aune), Before the Rhetorical Presidency, and Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1999 (with Stephen E. Lucas).
He is the author of more than 85 articles and chapters in scholarly journals and books. His work has appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Monographs, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Armed Forces and Society, and the Journal of Church and State, among other outlets.

Dr. Medhurst has been recognized with several national awards, including the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award, the Paul Boase Prize for Scholarship, the Religious Communication Association’s Scholar of the Year Award, the Michael Osborn Teacher/Scholar Award, the Julia T. Wood Teacher/Scholar Award, the National Communication Association’s Golden Anniversary Monograph Award, and the NCA Distinguished Scholar Award.

He is also the founder and editor of the award-winning interdisciplinary quarterly Rhetoric & Public Affairs, now in its sixteenth year of publication. In addition, Professor Medhurst is the founder and series editor of the Rhetoric and Public Affairs book series at Michigan State University Press and the founder and former editor of the Rhetoric and Religion book series at Baylor University Press and the Presidential Rhetoric Series at Texas A&M University Press. He also serves as the general supervisory editor of the ten volume Rhetorical History of the United States, currently in progress at Michigan State University Press.

Eileen Meehan
Media

Eileen R. Meehan (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1983) teaches in Southern Illinois University’s Radio-Television-Digital Media Department and Interdisciplinary Graduate program in mass communication and media arts. Recent courses have focused on new media and digital culture, Disney as an entertainment conglomerate, and reality television programs. Recent publications include a study of Dog the Bounty Hunter and its conflicting visions of family, work, and God as well as a brief history of deregulation’s impact on the structures of media markets and companies. Work in progress addresses women’s roles on screen and in the board room of media conglomerates; theorizing the commodity audience for new and old media industries; and a second wave of research in the Global Disney Audiences Project.