CCA Annual Conference |Charleston, South Carolina |October 2-3, 2015
2015 CCA Committee Members
Jason Black - President
Jason Edward Black (Ph.D., Maryland; MA, Wake Forest) is an associate professor of rhetoric & public discourse and affiliate in gender and race studies at the University of Alabama. His research and teaching areas include American Indian resistance and GLBTQ community discourses.
His work in these areas has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Southern Communication Journal, American Indian Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Western Journal of Communication, and Communication Quarterly, and in numerous book chapters. B
lack is the author of American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment (University Press of Mississippi, 2015) and is co-editor of An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk’s Selected Speeches and Writings (University of California Press, 2013) and Arguments about Animal Ethics (Lexington Books, 2010).
Robert Westerfelhaus - 1st Vice President
Dr. Robert Westefelhaus came to the College of Charleston in the Fall of 2002. A year later, he attended his first CCA conference and he has been a regular attendee since then. As a member of CCA, Robert has served as editor of the association’s journal, chair of the Jarrard undergraduate and graduate awards committees, and a reviewer of panel, paper, and journal article submissions. Currently, as Second Vice President he is busy planning the 2015 conference.
Robert received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Ohio University. He earned his B.A. from Ohio Dominican University. At CofC, he teaches a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses. As a scholar, he regularly publishes research focusing upon American popular culture. Robert has received numerous teaching, research and service awards. During the 2009-2010 academic year he taught as a Fulbright Fellow at the Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej in Lublin, Poland.
J. Brubaker - 2nd Vice President
Linda White - Immediate Past President
Linda White is a Professor of Communication at Central Piedmont Community College and serves as Co-Chair of COM. She has spent the last 23 years on the COM faculty and still finds joy in teaching Public Speaking.
White is currently the Immediate Past President of the Carolinas Communication Association and has served over the years as Secretary, Treasurer, as well as Vice-President and President. In 2008, she received the Betty Jo Welch Award for Service to CCA.
Jason Munsell - Editor
Jason Munsell is a Professor of Communication Studies at Columbia College in Columbia, SC. He received his BA and MA from the University of Arkansas and his PhD from Louisiana State University. He has taught at Columbia College since 2003.
He teaches African American Rhetoric, Persuasion, Advocacy, Political Communication, Popular Culture, and the Senior Capstone on Research Methods. His current research interests focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning, institutional histories, political rhetoric, the history of rhetoric and communication pedagogy, and tourism. His recent work has appeared in such journals as Communication Teacher and Carolinas Communication Annual.
Munsell has been recognized nationally by the National Communication Association for his scholarship on pedagogy and was the 2010 and 2013 winner of the Columbia College Student’s Choice Award for Teaching Excellence. He is a past president of the Carolinas Communication Association. He was the 2011 Ray Camp Research Award Winner for the Top Faculty Paper, Carolinas Communication Association. He was the 2012 Columbia College winner of the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Teaching Excellence Award.
He is also the recipient of the Carolinas Communication Association's 2012 Betty Jo Welch Award for service. He is the current Editor of the Carolinas Communication Annual and serves as Chair of the Finance Committee for the Southern States Communication Association. On campus, he advises Sigma Gamma Chapter of Lambda Pi Eta.
You can contact Munsell at jmunsell@columbiasc.edu. You can also find him on Facebook (Jason Brian Munsell) and follow him on Twitter @drjmunsell.
Lynn Gregory - Treasurer
Melody Lehn - Secretary
Melody Lehn is Assistant Professor of Speech Communication and Affiliate Faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, Extended University. She is professionally committed to investigating the ways that rhetoric imagines and sustains our democratic practices, with a specific emphasis on the intersections of gender, politics, and communication.
Lehn's research about American first ladies and political spouses such as Hillary Clinton, Jackie Kennedy, and Ann Romney has appeared in Rhetoric & Public Affairs and the edited collections Studies of Communication in the 2012 Presidential Campaign (ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr., 2014) and Venomous Speech: Problems with American Political Discourse on the Right and Left Volume 2 (ed. Clarke Rountree, 2013).
Melody’s current book project is about modern first ladies, advocacy, and international diplomacy.
Elenda Martinez-Vidal - Carolina Communication Association's Website Master
Elena MartÃnez-Vidal holds an MFA degree and a Certificate of Higher Education Leadership as well as 27 graduate hours towards an MA in English with an Emphasis in Speech Communication from the University of South Carolina (USC).
Her undergraduate degree was earned at Dickinson College, PA with a double major in Theatre Arts and French. Elena is currently the Department Chair of Humanities at Midlands Technical College. Elena is also a professional actor and director.
She is a company member at Trustus Theatre and is actively involved in theatre in the Columbia, SC area.