Assistant Professor of Teaching

About

  • Find Me On:

    linkedin

  • Office Hours

    By appointment

  • Role

    Faculty

  • Position

    • Assistant Professor of Teaching
    • Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs and Student Success

  • Concentration

    • Visual Communication

  • Department

    • CLA Dean's Office and Communication Studies

  • Education

    • Ph.D., Communication, University of Utah M.A., Colorado State University

Biography

Elinor Light holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Utah and her research focuses on visual rhetoric, aesthetics, and space. As both a scholar of visual communication and a practicing painter, she brings interdisciplinary perspectives to her work and is the recipient of the Visual Communication Division of the National Communication Association's Most Outstanding Article of the Year award in 2018. She has extensive teaching experience with over 120 courses taught at multiple institutions, including courses in rhetoric and visual communication, and is the winner of the 2021 Curricular Innovation Award in the College of Liberal Arts.
Elinor serves as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs and Student Success for the College of Liberal Arts, where she oversees undergraduate affairs including curriculum, career education, student advising, scholarships, and student success initiatives. She believes in the connection between faculty success and student success, including building support for continuing, contract, and adjunct faculty in the Dean's Office.

Publications

Elinor Light, 2023, “Bridging the Affective Gap in Online Classes: Teaching Public Memory through Embodied Learning.” Communication Teacher, 38:1, 28-33.

Elinor Light, 2019, “Playing in Cyberspace: The Social Performative on Heidelberg Street,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36:3, 207-220.

Elinor Light, 2018, “Aesthetic Ruptures: Viewing Graffiti as the Emplaced Vernacular,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 15:2, 179-195. Winner of NCA's 2018

Visual Communication Division's Outstanding Article of the Year.

Elinor Light, 2017, “The Rhetoric of Visual Play: An Analysis of Banksy’s Post-Subject Voice in New York City,” Visual Communication Quarterly, 24:1, 40-53.

Elinor Light, 2016, “Visualizing Homeland: Remembering 9/11 And the Production of The Surveilling Flâneur,” Qualitative Inquiry or Cultural Studies<=>Critical

Methodologies, 16:6, 511-524. Invited piece for a special issue on rhetorical field methods.

April A. Kedrowicz, Maria Dawn Blevins, and Elinor Christopher, 2011, “100 freshman civil Engineers: A Model for Integrating Communication and Teamwork in Large

Engineering Courses,” ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Published Conference Proceedings, American Society for Engineering Education.