[KB] Death of Jane Blankenship

[Clarke Rountree]

Dear Burkelers--

I'm sad to repost the news that Professor Jane Blankenship died a few days
ago. Jane was a Burke scholar from very early days. I recall her at the
1984 Kenneth Burke Conference--I think she led one of the seminars. She
published the first pentadic criticism applied to nonverbal communication
(a study of Reagan in the 1980 GOP debates--Actor as Scene). Below is the
obituary published on CRTNET.

Clarke,

NCA National Office (submitter), inbox at natcom.org

Obituary, Jane Blankenship

Dr. Jane Blankenship, the 64th President of the National Communication
Association (1978), passed away on April 24, 2015. Born in 1934 and a
native of Huntington, West Virginia, Professor Blankenship was a
graduate of the University of Akron and received her Ph.D. in 1961 from
the University of Illinois. Her mentor was Marie Hochmuth Nichols, NCA's
55th President. She was also mentored by NCA's 72nd President, Wayne
Brockriede, when she served as an assistant for his debate program. Dr.
Blankenship served on the faculty of Mount Holyoke College's Rhetoric
and Composition program before moving to the Department of Communication
at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. During her tenure there as
Director of Graduate Studies, the university established a Communication
Ph.D. program. Dr. Blankenship retired as a professor in 1997. Active in
several of the discipline's associations, she also served as President
of the Eastern Communication Association.

Dr. Blankenship received numerous prestigious awards throughout her
career, including many from NCA - the Golden Anniversary Monograph Award
(1975); the Robert J. Kibler Memorial Award (1988); the Douglas Ehninger
Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award (1992); the NCA Feminist and
Women's Studies Division Spotlight Scholar (1994); the Wallace Bacon
Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award (1997); and the NCA Women's Caucus
Francine Merritt Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Lives of
Women in the Field of Communication (2002).
As part of an NCA initiative to capture the stories of women who have
been prominent in NCA and beyond, Dr. Blankenship joined other women
leaders in sharing her personal and professional experiences in an essay
that is posted to the NCA website (http://bit.ly/1QAF10U).
--------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 
Dr. Clarke Rountree
Chair and Professor of Communication Arts
342 Morton Hall
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL  35899
256-824-6646
clarke.rountree at uah.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kbjournal.org/pipermail/kb_kbjournal.org/attachments/20150429/915ebe7f/attachment.htm>