Sam Martin, author of “Decoding the Digital Church,” explains why she spent the 2020 election season attending megachurch services online. An “impassioned defender of the need to have conservatism in the United States,” Martin confesses she’s terrified at the prospect of a 2024 Trump nomination and what it means for the stability of our rhetorical and political world.
Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin is a scholar of public address and political communication, with a particular interest in the public discourses of conservative social movements, especially evangelical voters. She has written or edited three books, most prominently Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump (University of Alabama Press, 2021). Her research has also been published in top journals including the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric and Public Affairs and Visual Communication Quarterly. Martin frequently appears as an expert commentator and consultant for news stories, and has appeared in USA Today, NPR, NBC, the Boston Globe, the Texas Tribune, and The Dallas Morning News, among others.
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Robin currently serves as Associate Director for the University of Tennessee Press, having previously built award-winning marketing teams for academic libraries, designing campaigns that not only won national awards, but were featured as exemplars of library marketing in multiple textbooks. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Clemson University, a master’s in library and information science from the University of South Carolina, a master’s in communication studies from the University of Kansas, and a PhD in Communication from Texas A&M University.
Paris is the Student Success Librarian for Media Literacy at the University of Tennessee Libraries. Her position grants her the opportunity to collaborate with The Studio services, to provide guidance and instruction on media creation to amplify the ideas and research for the University of Tennessee community. She has a bachelor’s degree in graphic design and new media from Johnson & Wales University, and a master’s degree in information science from the University of Tennessee.
Joshua is an assistant professor and the Digital Scholarship Librarian of the Scholars’ Collaborative, University of Tennessee Libraries. He received his PhD in Iberian and Latin American Literatures and Cultures from the University of Texas, Austin. His research focuses on 19th century print culture of Latin American abolitionists and the applications of digital humanities for recovery and remediation of Caribbean and Brazilian cultural heritage.
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