Public Speaking

William Keith is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he has supervised the public speaking course for more than ten years. He has taught public speaking for over 30 years at a variety of institutions, including the Universities of Pittsburgh and Louisville, Western Washington University, and Oregon State University. In addition to teaching a range of graduate and undergraduate courses in rhetoric, argument, and communication theory, he has written extensively about the history and significance of public speaking pedagogy in the U.S. context -- especially its connection to democracy and civic education -- for scholarly organizations as well as the Kettering Foundation and the World Bank. B.A., University of Redlands; Master of Divinity, Emory University; Ph.D., Northwestern University, Communication Studies. Rhetoric and Cultural Studies. Teaching and research interests include theories of the public and public discourse, public speaking, rhetorical theory, debate and deliberation, critical theory, and Cultural Studies. Dr. Lundberg also teaches the First Year Seminar "Think, Speak, Argue," which focuses on debate and public speaking skills as pedagogical tools and as critical components of democratic life. Dr. Lundberg's current research focuses on theories of the public as a social and discursive form, and on the animating principles for public discourses and identities. His book, Lacan in Public: Psychoanalysis and the Science of Rhetoric, University of Alabama Press (2012) works through the implications of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis for thinking the rhetorical character of publics as social formations and of the public discourses that circulate within them. He has also written a number pieces that unpack forms of discourse constituting specific publics, with special attention to the intersection between publics and religious discourse in Islam and Evangelical Christianity. At the level of specific practices of public discourse and pedagogy, Dr. Lundberg's work focuses on rhetorical theory, and on debate and public speaking as critical democratic forms. He has authored textbooks relating to rhetoric, public speaking, and public deliberation, including a Public Speaking textbook with Cengage Learning titled Public Speaking: Choices and Responsibility (2014) and The Essential Guide to Rhetoric (Bedford St. Martins, 2007).