ROBERT E. TERRILL

Department of English
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN  47405
(812) 855-0118
rterrill@iu.edu


Education
1996
PhD Northwestern University
Communication
1992
MA University of Arkansas
Communication
1984
BA San Jose State University
English


Employment

2015 - Present
Professor
English
Affiliate Professor in American Studies
Indiana University, Bloomington
2004 - 2015
Associate Professor
Communication and Culture
Indiana University, Bloomington
1998 - 2003
Assistant Professor
Communication and Culture
Indiana University, Bloomington
1996 - 1998
Visiting Assistant Professor
Communication and Culture
Indiana University, Bloomington
1988 - 1990
High School Teacher
English
Antelope Valley Union High School District
Lancaster, CA
1986 - 1988
High School Teacher
English, Mathematics, E.S.L
Campbell Union High School District
San Jose, CA


Grad Student
Dissertations

2024
Millie Hizer (co-advisor, with Scot Barnett)
Southeast Louisiana University
Title: Accessibility in Higher Education: Rhetorically Navigating Spaces of Ableism
2021
Bridget Sutherland
Edmonds College, Seattle, WA
Title: “She Made the Decision to Stay”: Resisting Rhetorics of Spatiality and Victim Blaming in the Effort to End Intimate Violence
2019
Jessica Rudy
Amazon, Inc.
Title: Civic Selfies: Online Social Media and the Development of Feminist Political Identity
2018
Katie Lind
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Title: The Unbearable Loss of Being: Curating, Documenting, and Resisting Anthropogenic Mass Extinction
2018
Rudo Mudiwa
UC Riverside
Title: The Prostitute as Citizen: Mobile Women and the Politics of Urban Space in Post-Independence Zimbabwe
2016
Cortney Smith
Oberlin College
Title: Countering the Vanishing Race Myth through a Native American Rhetoric of Hybridity
2016
Elizabeth Gilmore
Clemson University
Title: The Rhetoric of Benevolence: Invisible Children and the Construction of Whiteness in Philanthropy
2015
Valerie Wieskamp
Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
Title: Sexual Assault and the Melodramatic Mythos of War
2014
Jennifer Heusel
University of Oregon
Title: Why do these silly things exist?: Postracial, Free Market Logics in Local Discourse about Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
2012
Dave Naze
Highland Community College, Freeport, IL
Title: Kansas City, Congress, and Cooperstown: Re-Remembering The Cultural Legacy of Jackie Robinson
2008
Kathleen McConnell
San Jose State University
Title: Thinking Like a School System: Compulsory Education, Plurality, and the Problem of Judgment


Books

Terrill, Robert E., editor. Reconsidering Obama: Reflections on Rhetoric. (New York: Peter Lang, 2017).

Terrill, Robert E. Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015).

Terrill, Robert E., editor. The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Terrill, Robert E. Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgment. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004).

Andrews, James R., Michael C. Leff, and Robert E. Terrill. Reading Rhetorical Texts: An Introduction to Criticism. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998).



Selected Articles and Book Chapters

Terrill, Robert E. "Stephen A. Douglas and the Limits of Rhetorical Containment." In Public Debate in the Civil War Era, edited by David Zarefsky, 79-120. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2023.

Terrill, Robert E. “It’s Promethean, Man!”: The Frankenstein Myth and Rhetorical Invention.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 52.2 (2022): 122-136.

Terrill, Robert E. “Rhetorical Imitation and Civic Diversity.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 22.2 (2019): 157-171.

Terrill, Robert E. “The Post-Racial and Post-Ethical Discourse of Donald J. Trump.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 20.3 (2017): 493-510.

Terrill, Robert E. “Reproducing Virtue: Quintilian, Imitation, and Rhetorical Education.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 19.2 (2016): 157-171.

Terrill, Robert E. “Rhetorical Criticism and Citizenship Education.” In Rhetorical Criticism: Purpose, Practice, and Pedagogy, edited by James Kuypers. Lexington Books, 2014.

Terrill, Robert E. “Mimesis, Duality, and Rhetorical Education.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 41.4 (2011): 295-315.

Terrill, Robert E. “An Uneasy Peace: Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Lecture.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 14.4 (2011): 761-779.

Terrill, Robert E. “Learning to Read.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 13.4 (2011): 689-697.

Terrill, Robert E. “Unity and Duality in Barack Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union.’” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95.4 (2009): 363-386.

Terrill, Robert E. “James Buchannan: Romancing the Union.” In Before the Rhetorical Presidency, edited by Martin J. Medhurst. Texas A&M University Press, 2008.

Terrill, Robert E. “Unprecedented: Mimesis and Miscarriage.” In The Rhetoric of the New Political Documentary, edited by Thomas Benson and Brian Snee. Southern Illinois University Press, 2008.

Terrill, Robert E. “Going Deep.” Southern Communication Journal 71 (2006): 165-173.

Terrill, Robert E. “Irony, Silence, and Time: Frederick Douglass on the Fifth of July.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003): 216-234.

Terrill, Robert E. and Eric King Watts. “W. E. B. Du Bois, Double Consciousness, and Pan-Africanism in the Progressive Era.” In A Rhetorical History of the United States: Rhetoric and Reform in the Progressive Era, edited by J. Michael Hogan. Michigan State University Press, 2002.

Terrill, Robert E. “Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4.1 (2001): 25-53.

Terrill, Robert E. “White Guy, Black Texts: Appropriateness and Appropriation across Racial Difference.” Rhetoric Review 20 (2001): 56-60.

Terrill, Robert E. “Spectacular Repression: Sanitizing the Batman.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (2000): 493-509.

Terrill, Robert E. “Colonizing the Borderlands: Shifting Circumference in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 86.1 (2000): 67-85.

Terrill, Robert E. and David Zarefsky. “Consistency and Change in the Rhetoric of Stephen A. Douglas.” Southern Communication Journal 62.3 (1997): 179-196.

Terrill, Robert E. and Michael C. Leff. “The Polemicist as Artist: Du Bois’s Response to Booker T. Washington.” In Argumentation and Values: Proceedings of the Ninth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, edited by Sally Jackson. Speech Communication Association, 1995.

Terrill, Robert E. “Put on a Happy Face: Batman as Schizophrenic Savior.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79.3 (1993): 319-335.


Awards

2017
Faculty Mentor Award, presented by the Graduate and Professional Student Government and the University Graduate School, Indiana University
2016
Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Public Address
(for Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship)
2011
Choice Reviews “Outstanding Academic Title”
(for The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X)
2005
Kohrs-Campbell Prize in Rhetorical Criticism
(for Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgment)
1998
Rose B. Johnson Award
Southern Communication Journal
1997
Graduate Dissertation Award in Communication Studies
Northwestern University School of Speech