Cortney Smith

  • Assistant Professor of Writing and Communication

Areas of Study

Education

  • PhD, Indiana University, 2016
  • MA, University of Arkansas, 2008
  • BA, University of Arkansas, 2006

Biography

Cortney Smith is a cultural critic who examines issues of hegemony and marginalized discourse in public address, social movements, and popular culture. Her courses are devoted to understanding the role of public speaking in cultivating citizenship.

Currently, she is working on a project that interrogates the possibility of Native American art (films, novels, even graphic T-shirts) to not only critique deeply held myths about Native cultures and identities, but also to complicate those myths’ existing narratives by presenting alternative perspectives.

She is a fan of PBS and especially enjoys watching the Great British Bake Off.

Fall 2024

Public Communication — WRCM 110

Spring 2025

Introduction to Communication Studies — WRCM 240

Tutoring Lab — WRCM 403

Notes

Cortney Smith Essay Published

October 18, 2023

Cortney Smith's essay "The Suspense Novel as Persuasion: Survivance and Subversion in Louise Erdrich's The Round House" was recently published in Studies in American Indian Literatures.

Cortney Smith's Essay Featured

May 22, 2020

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Communication Cortney Smith's co-authored essay published in Quarterly Journal of Speech was featured in Communication Currents, the National Communication Association’s online periodical for timely scholarship.

Cortney Smith Co-Authors Essay

January 21, 2020

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Communication Cortney Smith's co-authored essay, "What to do when you’re raped’: Indigenous women critiquing and coping through a rhetoric of survivance," was published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, the flagship journal for rhetoric and communication.