Faculty Biographies
Nathan Johnson
Associate Professor
CONTACT
Office: CPR 384
Phone: 813-974-9542
Email: nathanjohnson@usf.edu
LINKS
Bio
Dr. Nathan Johnson is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of South Florida. His research areas are institutional rhetorics, rhetorical theory/history, and science and technology studies. His first book, Architects of Memory, details turning points during the 20th century when mnemonic logics were built into modern information technologies. Architects makes a case for the centrality of rhetoric’s art of memory in the development of data infrastructures. The Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine recognized his book as an honorable mention for their 2021 Book Award. Dr. Johnson was recognized with the Rhetoric Society of America’s Fellows’ Early Career Award. He gave the 2018 Alice G. Smith Lecture, which honors a scholar or author whose achievements have been instrumental in the development of librarianship or information studies. He won the National Communication Association’s Distinguished Book Chapter Award for Philosophy of Communication. Dr. Johnson's writing has appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Enculturation, Poroi, the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, and numerous other venues.
His next book projects continue to explore the traffic between data infrastructures and public rhetoric. Rhetoric’s Sensorium is a study of how the sensations of everyday city life affect public discourse. Rhetorics of Hate: Data Infrastructures and Crime Reporting details how federal and state hate crime reporting protocols marginalize vulnerable publics.
Prospective Undergraduate Students
As an educator, Dr. Johnson has been recognized with USF’s Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award. The American Society for Engineering Education honored him with the Best Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Paper Award for his co-authored scholarship. He teach courses that focus on technology, organizational communication, grant writing, and listening.
Prospective Graduate Students
Dr. Johnson hold affiliate appointments with the Department of Communication and the School of Information. He teaches graduate courses in institutional rhetorics, rhetorical theory/history, research methods, and science and technology studies. He values interdisciplinarity, and his courses are open to students from all departments. Dr. Johnson have served on thesis and dissertation committees in the Department of English, the Department of Communication, and the Department of History, both locally and at other universities. He values graduate education and am thrilled to serve on dissertations and theses.
Education
PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Area of Specialty
Institutional Rhetorics; Rhetorical Theory/History; Science and Technology Studies