WKU News

WKU’s Department of Communication is introducing The Carl L. and Mary Anne Kell Distinguished Lecture Series in Communication on Tuesday, February 27^th at 6:00 p.m. in the Grise Hall auditorium (GH 235). The annual series seeks to bring national and international lecturers to campus to promote a broader understanding of communication in society. Open to the public, the series will include a speaker from each of the five communication degrees offered at WKU: Advertising, Communication Studies, Corporate & Organizational Communication, and Public Relations.

The first speaker of the lecture series will be Dr. Michael L. Butterworth from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Butterworth is the Director of the Center for Sports Communication and Media, a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, and the Chair of Communication and Sport Division for the National Communication Association. His area of expertise involves sport, democracy, and communication with specific focus on national identity, militarism, and public memory. He is the author of Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity: The National Pastime and American Identity during the War on Terror and co-author (with Andrew Billings and Paul Turman) of Communication and Sport: Surveying the Field. Some of his past lecture titles are “George W. Bush as ‘The Man in the Arena’: Baseball, Public Memory, and the Rhetorical Redemption of a President,” “Reframing Public Memory in the Arena: Sport, the 10^th Anniversary of 9/11, and the Illusion of Democracy,” and “Militarism and Memorializing at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.”

The name of the lecture series honors Professor Emeritus Dr. Carl L. Kell and his late wife, Mary Anne Kell. Dr. Kell has been at WKU since 1972 and, though fully retired, continues to teach one Advanced Public Speaking course each semester. Though not published until 1999 at the age of 61, Dr. Kell found great success with his books about the Southern Baptist convention; some might even consider him the Grandma Moses of Communication. Some of his works include In the Name of the Father: The Rhetoric of the New Southern Baptist Convention (1999), Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War (2006), and Against the Wind: The Moderate Voice in Baptist Life (2009). His most recent book is The Exiled Generations: Legacies of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy Wars, published in 2014. 

For more information, contact WKU’s Department of Communication at (270) 745-3295.