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 and in early-modernity. 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) and The Iconoclastic Imagination: Image, Catastrophe, and Economy in America from the Kennedy Assassination to September 11 (2016, University of Chicago Press), and 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, Core Faculty  at Illinois in the Program for Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security, and Core Faculty in the Center for Writing Studies.

Presently, Prof. O'Gorman is working with Kevin Hamilton (Art & Design, U. of Illinois) on a multi-pronged project on the origins and rhetoric of Cold War nuclear test films. He is also working on a project on the “sublime” in early-modern rhetorical and political theory  and a book concerning the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination. [i][/i]