Kathleen Vandenberg

Teaching Interests

Classical rhetoric, visual rhetoric, rhetoric of space/place, and the digital Revolution

Research Interests

Urban design, visual rhetoric/advertising, interdisciplinary/experiential learning, style pedagogies, Joan Didion, and the essay

Selected Publications

Debates in Advertising: Ethics & Effectiveness (Palgrave Macmillan/Forthcoming, Fall 2024)

Built Design and the Rhetoric of Cities (Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Press, May 2023)

Joan Didion: Substance & Style (SUNY Press, 2021)

“Joan Didion’s Memoirs: Substance & Style” Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism. (June 2017).

“The Impact of Postmodernism on Style’s Demise.” Rhetoric Review. (Winter 2017).

“The Center is Not Holding: Joan Didion and the California Dreamer.” The Dark California: Millennial Concerns in the Contemporary Pop-Cultural Readings of  California. Ed. Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice and Agata Zarzycka. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing:( Forthcoming, 2017). 1-10. Print. Co- author   Christopher Coffman

“Lessons for Creating an Interdisciplinary Program: Rhetoric Course Design.” Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning (Summer 2015).

Second Edition. “’Think Small’: 1960s Print Ads and the World of Mad Men.” Lucky Strikes and a Three-Martini Lunch: Thinking About Television’s Mad Men. Ed. Danielle M. Stern, Jimmie Manning, and Jennifer C. Dunn. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2015. 192-209. Print.

“Revisiting Imitation Pedagogies in Composition Studies from a Girardian Perspective.” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture (Spring 2011).

“Twentieth-Century American Advertising and the Sacred.” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (Fall 2010).

“Searching for the “New” on Newbury: The Transformation of Space and Self.” Queen: A Journal of Rhetoric and Power (Fall 2009).

Untitled review of The Language of Democracy: Political Rhetoric in the United States and Britain, 1790-1900 by Andrew W. Robertson, Rhetorical Review (February 2008).

Untitled review of Woodrow Wilson and the Lost World of the Oratorical Statesman by Robert Alexander Kraig, Rhetorical Review (Spring 2007).

“René Girard and the Rhetoric of Consumption.” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture (Fall 2006).

“Sociological Propaganda: A Burkean and Girardian Analysis of Twentieth-Century American Advertising.” KB Journal 2 (Fall 2005).

Conference Presentations

“The Language of the City: Urban Design and Rhetorical Nudges.” Popular Culture Association/Ecology and Culture Section. Washington, DC, April 2019.

“Reality Demands: Reading the Rhetoric of Monuments/Revising the Past.” College English Association, New Orleans, LA, March 2019.

“Student Role in Experiential Learning.” Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Washington, DC, March 2019.

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Digital Multimedia Expression in the Composition Classroom.” Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Washington, DC, March 2019.

“The Essay: Traveling Between the Personal and the Universal, the Known and the New.” College English Association Conference, St. Petersburg, FL, April 2018.

“We Know Whose Words are Loaded with Life:” Experiential Learning in the Urban Environment.” Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2018.

“On Opinion, Slippery and Insecure.” Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2018.

Campus Presentations

Panelist, Hub & Pub: Digital Multimedia Expression, Center for Teaching and Learning, Boston University, February, 2019.

Panelist, Teaching with Technology Festival, Center for Teaching and Learning, Boston University, September, 2018.

Co-Administrator/Presenter, Boston University Symposium for Boston/London Faculty. Boston University, October, 2017

Speaker, “Evaluating Imitation Pedagogies: Designing a Quantitative Research Study in Composition Studies,” Faculty Research Seminar, Boston University, March, 2016.