Contact Information
702 S Wright Street
Urbana IL 61801
Research Areas
Biography
Ned O’Gorman, Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, works at the intersections of the history of rhetoric, media studies, and political thought, with special interest in the crises and tensions of modernity, especially in the Cold War. He is the author of Spirits of the Cold War: Contesting Worldviews in the Classical Age of American Security Strategy (2011, Michigan State University Press), the award-winning The Iconoclastic Imagination: Image, Catastrophe, and Economy in America from the Kennedy Assassination to September 11 (2016, University of Chicago Press), and, with Kevin Hamilton, Lookout America! The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War (2019, Dartmouth University Press), as well as a number of journal essays on topics related to rhetorical theory, aesthetics, religion, political theory, and political history. He is former President of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric and editor-elect of Advances in the History of Rhetoric (soon to be renamed Journal for the History of Rhetoric).
Research Interests
History of Rhetoric
Cold War
Media Studies
Research Description
20th-century American political culture.
Education
PhD, The Pennsylvania State University
Grants
2011-12, National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant
Awards and Honors
Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
Courses Taught
CMN 310, The Rhetorical Tradition
CMN 415/ CLCV 415, Classical Rhetorics
CMN 416, Early-Modern Rhetorics
CMN 417, Contemporary Rhetorics
CMN 538, Graduate, Cold War Rhetorical Culture
CMN 529, Graduate, Media Technologies
CMN 529, Graduate, Concepts in Communication Studies
CMN 529, Graduate, Media Theory, Old and New
CMN 210, Public Communication in Everyday Life
External Links
Highlighted Publications
O'Gorman, T. E. (2016). The Iconoclastic Imagination: Image, Catastrophe, and Economy in America from the Kennedy Assassination to September 11. University of Chicago Press.
Hamilton, K., & O'Gorman, T. E. (2018). Lookout America! The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War. (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture). University Press of New England.
Recent Publications
O'Gorman, N. (2020). Politics for Everybody: Reading Hannah Arendt in Uncertain Times. University of Chicago Press.
Hamilton, K., & O’Gorman, N. (2019). Engineering Geographies: The Arctic in the Cold War Air Defense Films of the US Air Force. In L. Kaganovsky, S. MacKenzie, & A. W. Stenport (Eds.), Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (pp. 133-154). Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvcj2wqq.11
Hamilton, K., & O'Gorman, T. E. (2018). Lookout America! The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War. (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture). University Press of New England.
O'Gorman, N. (2018). The Logic and Rhetoric of Power: George F. Kennan, Paul H. Nitze, and Planning for Cold War. In M. J. Medhurst (Ed.), World War II and the Cold War: The Rhetoric of Hearts and Minds (pp. 259-302). (Rhetorical History of the United States; Vol. 8). Michigan State University Press. https://doi.org/10.14321/j.ctv3znw4b.11
Bruner, K. P., McKean, P. R., O'Gorman, N., Pitchford, M. C., & Weickum, N. R. (2017). Old Rhetoric and new media. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 20(2), 339-355. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.2.0339