Professor

About

  • Find Me On:

    linkedin

  • Website

    http://www.thomasrdunn.com

  • Role

    Faculty

  • Position

    • Professor

  • Concentration

    • Rhetoric
    • LGBT Studies
    • Queer Theory
    • Public Memory
    • Visual Communication
    • Monuments
    • Criticism

  • Department

    • Communication Studies

  • Education

    • Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
    • M.A., Syracuse University
    • B.A., University of Richmond
    • Graduate Certificate in Business Intelligence, Colorado State University

  • Curriculum Vitae:

Biography

DR. THOMAS R. DUNN is a tenured Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. In addition to this title, Dr. Dunn was previously Interim Director of the Joe Blake Center for the Engaged Humanities, a Fellow in the WICHE Academy for Leaders in the Humanities (2022-2024) sponsored by the Mellon Foundation), a Monfort Professor (2020-2023) and a Presidential Leadership Fellow (2023-2024). He remains the founding director of the Queer Memory Project of Northern Colorado, an educational and community-based project to preserve and share the LGBTQ+ past of Northern Colorado.

Dr. Dunn joined the faculty at Colorado State in the Fall of 2012 where he teaches classes in rhetorical studies, including undergraduate classes in the History and Theory of Rhetoric, Rhetorical Criticism, the Rhetoric in Social Movements, and Communicating the Queer Past. He also teaches  graduate classes in the History of Rhetorical Theory, Rhetorical Criticism, and Queer Rhetorics. Dunn is a highly-sought adviser and mentor of graduate students and new teachers in higher education.

Dr. Dunn’s research examines the intersection of LGBT and queer culture, politics, and rhetoric with a focus on public memory. He is the author of two books. In October 2026, Dunn published The Pink Scar: How Nazi Persecution Shaped the Struggle for LGBTQ Rights with Penn State University Press. In 2016, he published Queerly Remembered: Rhetorics for Representing the GLBTQ Past (University of South Carolina Press). That book went on to win the Book of the Year Award from the LGBTQ+ Communication Studies Division of the National Communication Association. In addition to his book projects, Dr. Dunn’s research appears in numerous venues like Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, the Western Journal of Communication, and the Southern Communication Journal, as well as the Denver Post.

Dr. Dunn is the winner of numerous awards and honors. Among his many recognitions, Dunn received the the B. Aubrey Fisher Award (2016) from the Western States Communication Association, the National Communication Association’s Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award (2012), and the National Communication Association’s Stephen E. Lucas Debut Publication Award (2011). At CSU, he has been recognized with the CLA Outstanding Service Award (2024), the CLA Excellence in Teaching Award (2015), and was only the second humanist to be awarded the prestigious Monfort Professorship (2020-2023).

Dunn earned his Doctorate from the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh where he also completed a Ph.D. Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Publications

Books: 

  • The Pink Scar: How Nazi Persecution Shaped the Struggle for LGBTQ+ Rights (Penn State University Press).
  • Queerly Remembered: Rhetorics for Representing the GLBTQ Past (University of South Carolina Press, September 2016).

Select Articles:

  • "Grinding against Genocide: Rhetorics of Shame, Sex, and Memory at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe." RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly (Aug. 2019): 365-386, https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2019.1645347.
  • “Whence the Lesbian in Queer Monumentality? Intersections of Gender and Sexuality in Public Memory.” Southern Communication Journal, special issue on Gender and Public Memory 82, no. 4 (2017): 203-215, doi: 10.1080/1041794X.2017.1332090.
  • “Playing Neoliberal Politics: Post-Racial and Post-Racist Strategies in ‘Same Love.’” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (2016), doi:10.1080/14791420.2016.1149201.
  • “(Queer) Family Time: Brothers & Sisters and Managing Temporal Anxieties.” Western Journal of Communication 79, no. 2 (2015): 133-150, doi: 10.1080/10570314.2014.943420. *Winner of 2016 B. Aubrey Fisher Outstanding Journal Article Award
  • “The Quare in the Square: Memories, Queer Sensibilities, and Oscar Wilde.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 100, no. 2 (2014): 213-240, doi: 10.1080/00335630.2014.959987.
  • “The Tale of Two Oaths: Inaugural Oaths, Technical Memories, and Presidential Investiture.” South Communication Journal 79, no. 5 (2014): 427-447, doi: 10.1080/1041794X.2014.933869.
  • “Remembering ‘A Great Fag’: Visualizing Public Memory and the Construction of Queer Space.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 4 (2011): 435-60, 10.1080/00335630.2011.585168.
  • “Remembering Matthew Shepard: Violence, Identity, and Queer Counterpublic Memories.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 13, no. 4 (2010): 611-52, 10.1353/rap.2010.0212. *Winner of the 2011 Stephen E. Lucas Debut Publication Award

Courses

  • SPCM 201: History and Theory of Rhetoric (previously Rhetoric & Western Thought)

    An introduction to the foundational theories and principles of one of the central areas of the Communication discipline – the study of rhetoric…The organization of this course highlights prominent ways of viewing rhetoric in three different eras across the globe – the ancient period, the period between the Roman Republic and the early modern era, and the late modern and postmodern period. We will investigate each of these periods, not as isolated moments, but as highly intertwined events in the history of global thought.

  • SPCM 612: Rhetorical Criticism

    A graduate-level introduction to rhetorical criticism, the art of evaluating rhetorical artifacts in pursuit of public knowledge. In addition to covering the history of rhetorical criticism’s development, this class aims to prepare graduate students to be scholarly writers in the humanities. As such, we will pay particular attention to the role of the critic, the audience, the artifact, and the various methods for doing rhetorical criticism, as well as two different publication processes (academic publication and public scholarship).

  • SPCM 792A: Queer Rhetoric(s): Theory, Criticism, and Production

    An examination of foundational and contemporary theories, artifacts, and worldmaking-acts that help constitute queer life and politics, with an emphasis on communication and rhetoric.