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About Cara
Cara Finnegan is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she has been on the faculty since 1999, progressing from Assistant Professor (1999-2005) to Associate Professor (2005-2015) and full Professor (2015-present). She holds affiliated appointments in the Center for Writing Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and Art History. Finnegan earned a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University in 1999, an M.A. in Communication from the University of Maine in 1995, and a B.A. in Communication and Journalism from the University of St. Thomas in 1992. Throughout her career, she has taken on key administrative roles, including Associate Head of the Department (2015-present), Director of Graduate Studies (2010-2014), Director of Oral and Written Communication (CMN 111-112) (1999-2009), and Interim Associate Dean for the Graduate College (2015). She served as William S. Vaughn Visiting Fellow at Vanderbilt University's Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities (2006-2007).
Finnegan's research examines the role of photography as a tool for public life, with a focus on rhetorical histories of photography that analyze the production, composition, circulation, and reception of images at pivotal moments in U.S. history. Her major books include Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs (Smithsonian Books, 2003), Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression (University of Illinois Press, 2015), and Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital (University of Illinois Press, 2021). She has received prestigious awards such as the National Communication Association's Distinguished Scholar Award (2021), Winans-Wichelns Award (2016), Visual Communication Division Outstanding Book Award (2015), Diamond Anniversary Book Award (2004), University Scholar (2017), and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2016-2017). Finnegan has served on editorial boards for journals including Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and contributed to committees for the National Communication Association and Rhetoric Society of America. Her ideas on photography and visual politics have appeared in the New York Times, CBS, Vox, and scholarly publications in communication and U.S. history.
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