John M Kephart III
Associate Professor

Brief Biography

A proud Valley boy, I was born in sunny Southern California and raised in the Beautiful San Fernando Valley. I teach courses in rhetoric, feminist theory, public argument, and cultural studies, and spend more time than is reasonable making 90s pop culture references meaningful in lecture. I am currently the Basic Course Director, where I have the privilege of directing our MA Teaching Associate program. My research interests are gender and popular culture, political rhetoric, and public argument. My current projects include an examination of the 2012 general election and how "fatherhood" was used as a rhetorical strategy in presidential debates, campaign speeches, and legislative deliberation; considering how politicians and public figures can use the attention economy of modern media to simultaneously make extreme arguments to appease a base while disavowing those same arguments to appease moderates and avoid accountability; and examinations of space, place, and political economy to understand how we use discourses of "the City" vs "the Valley" to craft urban identity in Los Angeles.

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