Please welcome Bryan Blankfield, Visiting Lecturer

Please welcome, Bryan Blankfield, as Visiting faculty this fall. Bryan Blankfield received his PhD from Penn State University and is a rhetorical critic and historian, who specializes in presidential rhetoric, citizen voices, and animal studies.  Through recourse to archival research, he studies how citizens communicate with and rhetorically construct their president.  In respect to animal studies, he examines discourse about animals so as to better understand how people speak through animals and/or on their behalf.  Other scholarly interests include visual rhetoric and Kenneth Burke.  He is currently writing a book-length manuscript on the approximately 2000 letters that were addressed to/about FDR’s dog, Fala. Additional is his published article “‘A Symbol of His Warmth and Humanity’: Fala, Roosevelt, and the Personable Presidency,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 19:2 (Summer 2016), 209–244.