Barbara Warnick Elected 2010 Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America

Barbara Warnick

Barbara Warnick, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Communication in Pitt’s Department of Communication in the School of Arts and Sciences, has been elected a 2010 Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA). This is the first time a Pitt professor has received this honor.

Warnick, who also serves as chair of the department, is one of only five individuals to be named a fellow this year.

Prior to joining the Pitt faculty in 2006, Warnick was a professor of communication and chair of the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her research focuses on rhetorical theory and criticism.

Warnick is the author of Fénelon’s Letter to the French Academy (University Press of America, 1984), Critical Thinking and Communication: The Use of Reason in Argument with Edward S. Inch (Allyn &Bacon Publishing Company, 1989, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006), The Sixth Canon: Belletristic Rhetorical Theory and Its French Antecedents (University of South Carolina Press, 1993), Critical Literacy in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric and the Public Interest (Erlbaum, 2002), and Rhetoric Online: Persuasion and Politics on the World Wide Web (Peter Lang, 2007).

Warnick served on the board of the RSA from 2007 to 2009. She also has been a member of and served in various positions in the National Communication Association, the Western States Communication Association, the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, and the American Society for the History of Rhetoric; she served as the latter organization’s president in 1994.

Warnick received a BA from the University of Kentucky in 1968, an MA from Marshall University in 1972, and a PhD from the University of Michigan in 1977.

RSA is an organization of educators in rhetoric dedicated to research in their subject area. Fellows of the RSA are named by the board of directors in recognition of distinguished scholarship, teaching, and service to the field of rhetorical studies. RSA is affiliated with the American Council of Learned Societies.