Charles E. Morris III

Biography

Charles E. Morris III (he/him/his) is a queer rhetorical critic whose research focuses on LGBTQ history and public memory.

Morris is co-founding editor of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking. His books include “Queering Public Address,” “An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk’s Speeches and Writings,” “Remembering the AIDS Quilt,” and “The Conceit of Context.” His essays and guest edited special issues and forums have appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Text and Performance Quarterly, Women’s Studies in Communication, and elsewhere. His current project communes with the million forgotten dead on Hart Island off the coast of the Bronx.

In 2022, Morris was inducted as a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association. He has also been the recipient of NCA’s Douglas Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award (2021), three-time recipient of NCA’s Golden Monograph Award (2003, 2010 and 2022), NCA’s CCS and RCT divisions’ distinguished scholar awards (2020, 2016), the Randy Majors Award for Distinguished LGBTQ Scholarship (2008), and the Karl Wallace Memorial Award (2001) for early career achievement.

Education

• Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University, 1998

Selected Publications

• Daniel C. Brouwer and Charles E. Morris III, “Decentering Whiteness in AIDS Memory: Indigent Rhetorical Criticism and the Dead of Hart Island,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107 (May 2021): 1-25. Recipient of the 2022 NCA Golden Anniversary Monograph Award.
• Morgan DiCesare and Charles E. Morris III, “Queer/ing Archives.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, eds. Isaac N. West and Gust Yep. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 
• Charles E. Morris III and Kendall R. Phillips, eds., “The Conceit of Context: Resituating Domains in Rhetorical Studies” (New York: Peter Lang, 2020).
• Charles E. Morris III, “My Old Kentucky Homo: Abraham Lincoln, Larry Kramer, and the Politics of Queer Memory.” “Queering Public Address: Sexualities in American Historical Discourse.” Ed. Charles E. Morris III. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007: 93-120.
• Charles E. Morris III, “Pink Herring and the Fourth Persona: J. Edgar Hoover’s Sex Crime Panic.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech (May 2002): 228-244. Recipient of the 2003 NCA Golden Anniversary Monograph Award.