Casey Kelly
Professor Communication Studies University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Contact
- Address
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LPH 361
Lincoln NE 68588-0329 - Phone
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402-472-2070 On-campus 2-2070
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ckelly11@unl.edu
Casey Ryan Kelly is Professor of Rhetoric & Public Culture in the Department of Communication Studies. He is also Editor-Elect of the Quarterly Journal of Speech. He researches the political and cultural rhetoric of the U.S. far right, primarily through the lens of psychoanalytical theory. He has also published work on the rhetoric of white masculinity in film, television, and far right digital culture. He is author of five books including Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood (OSU Press, 2020), Caught on Tape: White Masculinity and Obscene Enjoyment (Oxford UP, 2023), and Manifesting Violence: White Terrorism, Digital Culture, and the Rhetoric of Replacement (coauthored with William Sipe, University of Alabama Press, 2025). He is current completing a book manuscript entitled Habeas Musculi: Muscularity, Fitness, and the Body Rhetorics of the Far Right which examines relationship between rhetorics of physical fitness, masculinity, and white nationalism.
Representative Publications
Kelly, C.R. (2023). Caught on tape: White masculinity and obscene enjoyment. London: Oxford University Press.
Kelly, C.R. (2020). Apocalypse man: The death drive and the rhetoric of white masculine victimhood. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Kelly, C.R. (2023). Covid-19 conspiracy rhetoric and other primal fantasies. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 109 (2): 132-153.
Kelly, C.R. (2021). White pain. Quarterly Journal of Speech 107 (2): 209-233.
Kelly, C.R. (2020). Donald J. Trump and the rhetoric of ressentiment. Quarterly Journal of Speech 106 (1), 2-24.
Courses
COMM 911D: Contemporary Rhetorical Theory
COMM 250: Rhetoric, Media, and Civic Life
COMM 330: Freedom of Speech