Debra Hawhee is Associate Professor of English and Speech Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

:: Contact Information
123 Lincoln Hall
217-265-6802
hawhee@uiuc.edu

:: Biographical Statement
Professor Hawhee specializes in history and theory of rhetoric and is jointly appointed in English and Speech Communication. She has written a book about rhetoric's emergence as an art of the body, which considers how the terminology, teaching, and performance of ancient rhetoric was derived in large part from sports such as wrestling and boxing. Her study, Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece, won an NEH fellowship in 2002 and was published on the University of Texas Press's Classics List in 2004. Hawhee is also author, with Sharon Crowley, of Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, soon to be in its 4th edition. She received the 2007 New Investigator Award from the National Communication Association's Rhetoric and Communication Theory Division, is currently the book review editor for Quarterly Journal of Speech, and is also at work on a book about Kenneth Burke and the complex relations between bodies and language.

:: Publications
Recent Articles

“Somatography.” Lead Review essay. Quarterly Journal of Speech. 93:3 (Fall 2007), 365-371.

“Language as Sensuous Action: Kenneth Burke, Sir Richard Paget, and Gesture-Speech Theory.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92:4, (November 2006), 331-354.

“Rhetoric, Bodies, and Everyday Life.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 36:2 (Spring 2006), 155-164.

"Burke on Drugs." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31:1 (2004), 5-28.

"Bodily Pedagogies: Rhetoric, Athletics, and the Sophists' Three Rs. College English 65:2 (2002), 142-162.

"Agonism and Arete." Philosophy and Rhetoric 35:3 (2002), 185-207.

"Kairotic Encounters." In Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention, edited by Janice Lauer and Janet Atwill. (pp. 16-35) Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2002.

"Emergent Flesh: Phusiopoesis and Arts of Training." Journal of Sport and Social Issues 25:2 (2001), 141-157.

Curriculum Vitae

:: Research Interests
History of Rhetoric, classical rhetoric, rhetorical theory, Kenneth Burke, body studies