BA in English

Bradford Vivian, 1996

Bradford Vivian is a professor in the department of communication arts and sciences and former director of the Center for Democratic Deliberation at Penn State University. His research and teaching focuses on theories of rhetoric (or the art of persuasion) and public controversies over collective memories of past events. Vivian is the author of Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education (Oxford University Press), Commonplace Witnessing: Rhetorical Invention, Historical Remembrance, and Public Culture (Oxford University Press), Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again (Penn State Press) and Being Made Strange: Rhetoric beyond Representation (SUNY Press).

His honors and awards from the National Communication Association include the James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address, the Critical/Cultural Studies Division Book of the Year Award, and the Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award. Vivian is also a recipient of the Class of 1933 Distinction in the Humanities Award from the Penn State College of Liberal Arts. In addition to his academic work, Vivian has published op-eds in the Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.