Dr. Barry Brummett

Charles Sapp Centennial Professor in Communication
Chair
CMA 7.114
512-471-5251
512-232-1714
FAX: 512-471-3504
brummett@mail.utexas.edu

View Dr. Brummett's vita in PDF format

Dr. Barry Brummett (Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1978) is the Chair of the department. He has taught at Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before coming to the University of Texas-Austin. Brummett's research interests turned early to the theories of Kenneth Burke and to epistemology and rhetoric. In those studies Brummett laid the foundation for a research program that investigates the functions and manifestations of new rhetoric. One later line of research took him into the study of apocalyptic rhetoric. Brummett's most recent, ongoing interests are in the rhetoric of popular culture. He has developed a general theoretical basis for understanding that rhetoric and has investigated the rhetoric of symbolic forms most recently. Brummett is currently at work on a scholarly monograph exploring the ways in which personal and social style is the connection among communication, culture, commodification, and aesthetics. Brummett is the author of Rhetorical Dimensions Of Popular Culture, Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric, Rhetoric of Machine Aesthetics, The World and How We Describe It, and Rhetorical Homologies. He has edited Landmark Essays: Kenneth Burke And Reading Rhetorical Theory, and is the author or coauthor of several textbooks.