Professor
247 Smith Hall
Spring 2024 Office Hours:
Mon: 9:00 – 1:00 (virtual)
Wed: 9:00 – 1:00 (virtual)
Fri: 9:00 – 1:00 (virtual)
Office hours are times that faculty members have set aside specifically to help students. Please take advantage of these office hours if you have questions about something related to your class or are experiencing anything that is interfering with your ability to succeed in the class.
About
Stephen M. Underhill (Professor of Communication Studies) is a Washington Post contributor and works in the area of fake news, disinformation, and propaganda. He studies institutionalized power in critical and cultural contexts, which directs his focus to matters of law enforcement and national security. Among other things, Stephen is interested in how law enforcement speaks to and about its different publics to preserve and defend power structures. He is the director of the Fake News & Information Literacy Project, an IRB-approved undergraduate research study that investigates online perceptions of wedge issues and their media sources. He is published in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Western Journal of Communication, and Voices of Democracy. He contributes to Not Past It and The Road to Now with Bob Crawford & Ben Sawyer. Dr. Underhill is the author of The Manufacture of Consent: J. Edgar Hoover and the Rhetorical Rise of the FBI (Michigan State University Press, 2020).
Education
Ph.D. in Communication from University of Maryland
M.A. in Communication Studies from University of Portland
B.A in Political Science from Sonoma State University
Joined Marshall Faculty August 2012.
Scholarly Interests
Rhetoric, Public Address, Archival History, Law Enforcement
Courses Taught
CMM 205: Rhetorical World
CMM 302: Professional Presentations
CMM 307: Political Communication
CMM 308: Persuasion
CMM 310: Argumentation and Debate
CMM 311: Language and Communication
CMM 322: Intercultural Communication
CMM 345: Listening and Feedback
CMM 402/502: Rhetorical Theory
CMM 404/504: Rhetorical Criticism
CMM 409/509: Theories of Persuasion and Change
CMM 605: Qualitative Research Methods
Special Topics: Rhetoric of Collective Memory
Special Topics: National Security Disclosure
Selected Publications and Presentations
Stephen M. Underhill, “Prisoner of Context: The Truman Doctrine Speech and J. Edgar Hoover’s Rhetorical Realism,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 20, no. 3 (2017): 453-87.
Stephen M. Underhill, “Urban Jungle, Ferguson: A Place and Space of Visual Containment,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 102, no. 4 (2016): 396-417.
Stephen M. Underhill, “J. Edgar Hoover’s Domestic Propaganda: Narrating the Spectacle of the Karpis Arrest,” Western Journal of Communication 76, no. 4 (2012): 438-57.
CV: https://marshall.academia.edu/StephenUnderhill/CurriculumVitae