John Lucaites


John Louis Lucaites is a professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture at Indiana University. Since 2012, he has been the Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities and Undergraduate Education at Indiana University.

Education

Lucaites obtained a Ph.D. in 1984 from the University of Iowa, a M.A. in 1975 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in 1974 from Rutgers College.

Academic career

Lucaites worked as an Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at the University of Alabama from 1984-1987. In 1987, he joined the faculty at Indiana University where he is a professor of and the Provost Professor of English. He was previously a faculty member in the .

Research interests

Professor Lucaites's research concerns the general relationship between rhetoric and social theory, and seeks to contribute in particular to the critique and reconstruction of liberalism in contemporary social, political, and cultural practices in the United States. The project currently has three related trajectories. The first emphasis focuses on the relationship between race and "American" identity and attends to the ways in which the concept of "race" is constructed and articulates with the prevailing ideological commitments of contemporary Anglo-American versions of the liberal project. The second emphasis focuses on the impact of visual rhetorics on the construction, dissemination, appropriation, and remembrance of the key principles of American liberal democracy. The third emphasis focuses on the fragmentation of liberalism in the United States at the end of the twentieth century in what is increasingly being referred to as postmodernity.

Publications

Books: