Kathleen J. Turner is professor of Communication Studies and director of Oral Communication at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. A rhetorical analyst, Turner studies communication as a process of social influence, particularly concerning media, politics, popular culture, and women’s issues. Her BA in Speech Communication and English is from the University of Kansas; her MA and PhD in Communication are from Purdue University, where she was a University Fellow.
Turner is the author of Lyndon Johnson's Dual War: Vietnam and the Press (1985). She is the editor of Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, (University of Alabama Press, 1998). Her publications also include a monograph on Mass Media and Popular Culture; two entries in the Encyclopedia of American Journalism and one in the International Encyclopedia of Communication; chapters on Miami Vice and sixties protest music; and articles on the rhetorical analysis of movies, the future of rhetorical studies, presidential libraries, Time magazine's coverage of religion, social movements' efforts to influence news coverage, comic strips, and the history of product placement.
Long-term projects include a book-length study of the images of women in comic strips and a co-authored volume on communication centers. She relishes leading seminars and serving as Scholar in Residence for the National Communication Association's (NCA) Hope Conference. Her teaching specialties include Principles of Oral Communication, Critical Analysis of Media, History of Mass Communication, Visual Communication and Gender, Advertising, Political Communication, and Persuasion. In 2007 she received the Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teaching in Higher Education from NCA, and in 2011 the Michael M. Osborn Teacher-Scholar Award from the Southern States Communication Association (SSCA). Elected to the leadership succession of NCA, she will serve as president in its centennial year of 2014.