Rosa A. Eberly

Professional Bio

Rosa A. Eberly is a free-range rhetorician who studies histories and theories of rhetoric, publics theory, public memory, sound, character, and deliberation. Most recently, Eberly curated the archive of Harry Shearer’s Le Show, now in its thirty-ninth year, for the Library of Congress American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Eberly's curated exhibit was the focus of the CAS 2023 Select Summer Symposium, sponsored in part by CHI.

Since 1996 Eberly has studied and taught courses on relationships among rhetoric, violence, and public memory with emphasis on violence in and against public education. Additional interests include Isocrates and Theophrastus, free speech and democracy, rhetoric and poetics, sound and aural rhetorics, and theories of identity. Eberly is author of Towers of Rhetoric: Memory and Reinvention and Citizen Critics: Literary Public Spheres; co-editor of A Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy and The Sage Handbook of Rhetoric; co-author of The Elements of Reasoning, 2d ed.; and articles on publics theory, proto-public deliberation in rhetoric classrooms, public memory, sound studies, and rhetoric and identity.

Eberly is Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences and the Department of English, and she directs the Intercollege Minor in Civic and Community Engagement.