Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Women’s and Gender Studies, Co-Director of the Center for Speaking & Listening, and Program Director of SUMMA Theological Debate Camp
B.A., Furman University; M.A., University of Memphis; Ph.D., University of Memphis
About
Melody Lehn is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Women’s and Gender Studies at Sewanee: The University of the South, where she also serves as the Co-Director of the Center for Speaking & Listening and co-directs the Speaking-Across-the Curriculum Initiative. Lehn completed her M.A. (2009) and Ph.D. (2013) in Communication/Rhetoric at the University of Memphis. Lehn earned her B.A. in Communication Studies with a concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies at Furman University, where she was honored to receive the Endel Medal for Excellence in Mass Communication. Lehn’s academic training is in rhetorical studies, with emphases in public address, rhetorical criticism, and rhetorical pedagogy.
As a student and teacher of public address, Lehn is committed to investigating the ways that rhetoric imagines and sustains our democratic practices and communities. With more than a decade of experience in the classroom, Lehn has received several recognitions for teaching, including the John Angus Campbell Award for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Memphis in 2009 and 2012, the Southern States Communication Association’s Dwight L. Freshley Award for Excellence in Early Career Teaching in 2018, and the College Award for Recognition in Teaching at Sewanee in 2019.
Lehn researches and writes at the intersection of rhetoric, politics, and gender, with an interest in the public discourse of American women. She has presented more than thirty research papers at state, regional, national, and international conferences and colloquia, and has won several awards for scholarship, including the Morton Dissertation Award at the University of Memphis in 2013 and the Ray Camp Prize for Outstanding Faculty Research from the Carolinas Communication Association in 2016. Her articles and chapters have appeared in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, the Carolinas Communication Annual, and several edited collections about topics as varied as political campaign rhetoric, “venomous speech,” and the Civil Rights sit-ins. She has co-edited two books: Rhetoric: Concord and Controversy (Waveland Press, 2011) with Antonio de Velasco and, most recently, Rhetoric, Race, Religion, and the Charleston Shootings: Was Blind but Now I See (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019) with Sean Patrick O’Rourke, Professor of Rhetoric and American Studies at Sewanee. Lehn's forthcoming book, with Camille K. Lewis (Furman University), One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment: An Anthology, 1923-2023, will be published by Peter Lang International Publishers in 2024.
Courses Taught
- RHET 101: Public Speaking
- RHET 110: Argumentation & Debate
- RHET 220: Teaching Speaking & Listening
- RHET 311: U.S. Public Address I: 1620-1865
- RHET 331: Voices of American Women
- RHET 341: Rhetoric of Mass and Social Media
- RHET 440: Directed Research and Writing
- RHET 444: Independent Study
- RHET 491: Special Topics
- WMST 400: Senior Seminar
