Associate Professor and Department Head
Office: Lang 326, Department of Communication and Media
Phone: (319) 273-2217
Email: ryan.mcgeough@uni.edu
Education: Ph.D. Louisiana State University
Research Interests: Visual communication, rhetoric and public deliberation, public memory, digital culture.
Ryan’s research focuses on one broad question: how do people use a variety of visual and multimedia technologies to access the public sphere and engage in deliberation and persuasion? To answer this question, he has published research on the visual argumentation of monuments, political satire, information literacy, and the public argument of Columbian hunger strikes. Ryan has also published The Essential Guide to Visual Communication, a textbook that is part of Bedford/St. Martin’s “Essential Guide” series.
From the Bedford/St. Martin’s website: “The Essential Guide to Visual Communication is a concise introduction to the evolution, theory, and principles of visual communication in contemporary society. This guide helps students develop the skills they need to become critical consumers of visual media by examining images through the lens of visual rhetoric. Students see how images influence and persuade audiences, and how iconic images can be repurposed to communicate particular messages. Images selected and discussed throughout the text highlight examples of visual communication from earlier generations and the current digital environment that students encounter in their everyday lives.”
Ryan is Head of the Department Communication and Media. He is also Basic Course Director, overseeing the training and instruction of our department’s Liberal Arts Core course, Oral Communication (COMM 1000). This allows him the opportunity to work closely with graduate students in order to provide them training and support as they begin their own teaching careers. Ryan has also taught courses about digital culture, political communication, rhetoric and civic culture, and graduate seminars on research methods and critical cultural studies. He tries to build each of his classes around providing students with at least one truly unique assignment or learning experience.