Roger Davis Gatchet, Ph.D.

Faculty Photo

Associate Professor

E-mail: Roger Davis Gatchet, Ph.D.

Pronouns: he/him

Office: Wayne Hall 232
Phone: 610-436-1511

Spring 2024 Office Hours: Monday/Wednesday 2-4 p.m., Friday 2-3 p.m., or by appointment. During these times I will be available to meet via Zoom, telephone, or in-person in my campus office. For virtual meetings, use my Zoom office hours link.

Dr. Gatchet holds a B.A. in Speech Communication from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and he completed both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Language at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches undergraduate courses in public speaking, communication theory, and rhetorical theory and criticism. At the graduate level he also teaches seminars that survey foundational theories of communication and rhetorical approaches to studying popular culture.

Dr. Gatchet's research focuses on the rhetoric of public memory and popular culture, as well as oral history. He has completed oral history projects interviewing blues musicians in Austin, Texas through partnerships with the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past and Baylor University's Institute for Oral History, which awarded him the Charlton Oral History Research Grant. In 2016 he was the recipient of the Oral History Association's Elizabeth B. Mason Project Award.

His most recent work explores the history and impact of civil rights tourism in the state of Mississippi. In 2023, he published Terror and Truth: Civil Rights Tourism and the Mississippi Movement (University Press of Mississippi). Co-authored with Stephen A. King (St. Edward's University), Terror and Truth combines critical analysis, onsite fieldwork, and interviews with museum directors, local civil rights entrepreneurs, historians, and movement veterans to examine how Mississippi confronts its history of racial violence and injustice through civil rights tourism.

Dr. Gatchet's research also appears in journals such as Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Western Journal of Communication, Southern Communication Journal, and Oral History Review, as well as chapters in edited book collections. He is a coauthor of Argumentation and Debate: A Public Speaking Approach (3rd ed.), and in 2018, he was the co-recipient of the Western States Communication Association's B. Aubrey Fisher Outstanding Journal Article Award. He is also a contributing writer and music critic for the magazine Living Blues. When he's not shepherding the defiant honeybees in his backyard apiary, Dr. Gatchet enjoys bread baking, gardening, and playing blues harmonica.

Courses Taught

  • SPK 208 Public Speaking
  • COM 206 Argumentation
  • COM 209 Principles and Practice of Public Speaking I
  • COM 211 Communication Literacy and Inquiry
  • COM 213 Public Communication
  • COM 309 Principles and Practice of Public Speaking II
  • COM 344 Rhetorical Criticism
  • COM 490 Capstone in Communication Studies
  • COM 501 Theoretical Perspectives on Human Communication
  • COM 508 Special Topics Seminar in Rhetoric and Popular Culture