BONNIE J. DOW is Professor of Communication Studies and Dean of Academic Affairs for the College of Arts & Science. She is the author of Watching Women’s Liberation, 1970: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the Network News (University of Illinois Press, 2014) and Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). She is co-editor (with Julia T. Wood) of The Sage Handbook of Gender and Communication (2006) and a co-editor of The Aunt Lute Anthology of U.S. Women Writers, Volume One: 17th –19th Centuries (Aunt Lute Books, 2004). Dow’s research interests include the rhetoric and representation of the first and second waves of feminism in the United States.

Education

Ph.D., 1990, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Department of Communication Studies.

M.A., 1987, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Department of Communication Studies

B.A., 1985, Baylor University, Waco, TX, Department of Communication Studies

Typical Courses

Rhetoric and Civic Life
Rhetoric and the American Experience, 1865–1945
Rhetoric and the American Experience, 1945–present
Women, Rhetoric, and Social Change

Representative Publications

Watching Women’s Liberation, 1970: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the Network News. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2014.

“The Lessons of History: Women’s Studies in Communication Approaches 40,” Women’s Studies in Communication, 37 (Fall 2014), 259-261.

(with Julia T. Wood) “Repeating History and Learning From It: What Can SlutWalks Teach Us About Feminism?” Women’s Studies in Communication, 37 (Spring 2014), 22-43.

“Does It Take a Department to Raise a Child?” Women’s Studies in Communication [Special Issue on Redefining the Professor(iate): Valuing Commitments to Care and Career in Academe], 31 (Summer 2008), 158-165.

“The Traffic in Men: Fatal Attraction, Postfeminist Masculinity, and 1980s Media,” Women’s Studies in Communication, 29, (Spring 2006), 113-131. *Reprinted in Carl Burgchardt, Ed. Readings in Rhetorical Criticism, 5th ed.

(with Celeste M. Condit) “The State of the Art in Feminist Scholarship in Communication,” Journal of Communication, 55, (September 2005), 448-478.

“Fixing Feminism: Women’s Liberation and the Rhetoric of Television Documentary,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90, (February 2004), 53-80.

Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.