Lynn Clarke
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
PhD, Northwestern University
1117 Cathedral of Learning
Phone: 412-624-6567
Lynn Clarke is an Assistant Professor of Communication who teaches courses on the rhetoric of social movements, rhetoric and civic life, contemporary rhetorical theory, and rhetoric and critical social theory, among others. In her courses, students are invited to think, talk about, and debate theories and issues of speech and communication as they inform, emerge from, and proceed in various case studies of public dispute. Ranging across time and space, these studies include terrorism and counter-terrorism policy, the beginnings of South African reconciliation and nonracial democracy, legal recognition of same-sex couples, and feminism in society. A past resident of Pittsburgh, Clarke received her PhD in Communication Studies from Northwestern University and was an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. Her research centers on rhetorical theory and the dynamics of deliberative politics, and is generally provoked by deep-seated social disputes and the legitimating force of public debate. Clarke is currently finishing a book manuscript in which she identifies and defines the phenomenon of traumatic social controversy, and theorizes how voice, analytic interpretation, speech, and communication may spur deliberation in situations characterized by this form of dispute. Clarke is also working on a second book project that takes up the question of judicial rhetoric and its relationship to individuals, pluralistic civil society, constitutional democracy, and controversial terms of law. Most interesting, here, are those situations in which the terms of justice are themselves in deep dispute, and questions of “how” appear as important as questions of “what.” Clarke has published in several spaces including Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and Argumentation and Advocacy. She looks forward to her return to Pittsburgh.