Cara A. Finnegan

Associate Professor

Website:http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~caraf

Curriculum Vitae

Education: Ph.D., Northwestern University

Research Interests: Rhetorical history/criticism/theory, visual rhetoric, 20th century American public address, U.S. women's rhetorical history, photography studies.

Current Research: Professor Finnegan's current research seeks to sketch the critical/theoretical boundaries of what she is calling "the visual rhetoric project," a project that engages in both the rhetorical analysis of artifacts of visual culture and the exploration of rhetorical theory through the lens of visuality. She is also at work on a related book-length study, Images in Controversy: Iconoclasm and the Rhetoric of Photography.

Representative Recent Publications:

Finnegan, C.A. (2003). Picturing Poverty: American Print Culture and FSA Photographs. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books.

Finnegan, C.A. (2003). Doing rhetorical history of the visual: The photograph and the archive. In C. Hill and M. Helmers, Defining Visual Rhetorics (pp. 195-214). Manwah, NJ: Lawrence.

Finnegan, C.A. (2003). Elastic, agonistic publics: John Dewey's call for a third party. Argumentation and Advocacy, 39(1), 161-173.

Finnegan, C.A. (2001). Documentary as art in U.S. Camera. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 31(2), 37-67.

Finnegan, C.A. (2000). Social engineering, visual politics and the new deal: FSA photography in Survey Graphic. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 3(3), 333-362.