Communication Studies Graduate Students
Charles Goehring
Program: Rhetoric and Public Advocacy
Began program in 2003
Area of Study: Rhetorical criticism, visual rhetoric
Office: 105 BCSB
E-Mail: charles-goehring@uiowa.edu
Chuck Goehring is a doctoral candidate (ABD) with a concentration in Rhetoric and Public Advocacy. He received his bachelor's degree in Communication from UC San Diego, and his master's degree in Communication Studies from San Diego State University. Chuck's research is primarily guided by questions involving rhetorical force and the ramifications that particular rhetoric holds for political policy. His scholarship begins by investigating what rhetorical strategies are put to use in particular texts, and then moves forward to investigate how those texts shape public opinion, and under what conditions they might open the possibility for social change. His interests lie mainly in the realm of visual rhetoric since the visual is an increasingly important, but still under theorized aspect of American public and political life. Chuck incorporates a critical analysis of visual images, particularly still photographs, in their relation to the discourses, practices, and institutional/power relations within which they appear and other contextual factors in which they are utilized. He is currently completing his dissertation which examines how the Abu Ghraib photographs are used within different discursive formations and to what effect, if any, their use shapes U.S. public opinion. Other projects focus on the rhetorical utilization of late nineteenth and early twentieth century lynching photographs within contemporary contexts.