Charles E. Morris III
Education
Ph.D., Speech Communication, Pennsylvania State University
Research Expertise
Memory
Queer Theory
Rhetoric
Charles E. Morris III (he/him/his) is a queer rhetorical critic whose research focuses on LGBTQ history and public memory. Morris co-founded QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (Michigan State University Press). His books include Queering Public Address, An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk's Speeches and Writings, Remembering the AIDS Quilt, and The Conceit of Context. His essays and guest edited special issues and forums have appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, Text & Performance Quarterly, Women’s Studies in Communication and elsewhere.
In 2022, Morris was inducted as a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association. He has also been the recipient of NCA’s Douglas Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award (2021), three-time recipient of NCA’s Golden Monograph Award (2003, 2010, and 2022) for article of the year, as well as NCA's Public Address, Critical Cultural Studies, and Rhetorical and Communication Theory divisions’ distinguished scholar awards (2024, 2020, 2016), the Randy Majors Award for Distinguished LGBTQ Scholarship (2008), and the Karl Wallace Memorial Award (2001) for early career achievement.
Morris served as chair of the Research Council and on the Executive Committee of the National Communication Association, 2020-2022.
Publications
Queering Pasts and Futures of Public Address
Chuck Morris co-edited a special double issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs with Pamela VanHaitsma
Author/Lead: Charles E. Mo…Morris and VanHaitsma "assemble for this special issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs— in the pages of one of the most revered journals in rhetoric and public address— a cast of queer scholars and scholarship from across generations to reflect on and illustrate diverse perspectives concerning where queering public address has been since 2007 (and its longer history), what its current state entails and does not but should include, and where it might— should— venture into the future. Much has changed since the queer turn in the field began, with exhilarating and vexing challenges to whiteness, coloniality, transantagonism, ableism, and more in emergent scholarship. Research is also becoming much less US- centric than it was when Queering Public Address was published nearly two decades ago. What the very key term “queer/ing” meant variously then has transformed significantly over time. We have thus asked the contributors to time travel bidirectionally to account for and embody queer/ing rhetoric and public address for the readership, for the generation to come, of Rhetoric & Public Affairs and the field writ large."
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