Michele Kennerly

Professional Bio

Dr. Kennerly is a theorist and historian of rhetoric specializing in the texts, terms, and figures of the ancient Mediterranean world and their reception, including their resistive reception. She is the author of one book (Editorial Bodies: Perfection and Rejection in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics) and editor or co-editor of three (Ancient Rhetoric + Digital Networks; Information: Keywords; A New Handbook of Rhetoric: Inverting the Classical Vocabulary). Her current book project scrutinizes invocations of ancient Athens in discourse about automation from the 1830s to now. She is at work, too, on smaller, microcosmic projects about: the genus of the paradoxical encomium; the queerness of classical references in Jane Campion’s film adaptation of Thomas Savage’s novel The Power of the Dog; the rhetorical works of the 13th-century Italian notary Brunetto Latini.

She has served in leadership positions in national and international societies, most notably as President of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric (2019-2021) and Secretary General of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (2020-2025). She is a member of the Leadership Board of the Colloquium for Ancient Rhetoric and of the Advisory Board of the book series International Studies in the History of Rhetoric at Brill. With Damien Smith Pfister and Casey Boyle, she is co-founder and continuing co-editor of the University of Alabama Press book series Rhetoric + Digitality. At Penn State, she directed the graduation-required communication course for six years and the undergraduate program in CAS for three.

Dr. Kennerly teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on such topics as rhetorical theory, the history of rhetoric, information, rhetoric and media, and speechwriting. In recognition of her teaching, her training of graduate student teachers, and her mustering of pedagogical resources during the early months of the Covid pandemic, she received the Outstanding Teaching Award for Tenure-Track Faculty from the College of the Liberal Arts in 2021. She is keen to work with students interested in building expertise in the history of rhetoric through collaborative and independent work.