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Professor, and public speaking coordinator, in the Communication & Media Studies Department.Curriculum Vitae |
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Spring 2025
class schedule:
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office hours (VH B125-G)
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ℹ️ Info for Advisees
🎤 PRES Info for Instructors/Administration
Dr. Knopf [pronounced “nope”] is a rhetorician and sociologist, whose career is invested in rhetorical and communication studies. She is committed to developing undergraduates’ critical thinking, visual, written, oral, and aural skills, and to encouraging new generations of knowledge-producers through graduate study.
Much of her work is premised in political communication – the way political information is communicated to society; how politicians communicate; how political information and ideals are represented in various media; collective identities and change; interpersonal and public deliberation and dialogue; decision making; mis/dis-information and transparency; the history of U.S. political communication and rhetoric; and, campaign communication (she even traveled to New Hampshire twice to study the “First in the Nation” presidential primaries in real time, live and in person). She has taught college-level political communication courses focusing on campaign communication , deliberative communication, political satire, political advertising, the history of women candidates, and zombie politics. She studies political rhetoric in the popular arts, recognizing how it interacts with our daily lives – work that earned recognition for top papers in Political Communication at multiple Eastern Communication Association conferences. Her expertise in popular culture can help prepare students for many careers in government, museums, libraries, media, and other fields.
Dr. Knopf has been teaching college courses in public speaking and public address since 2001 (nearly 90 sections of introductory speech and speaking intensive classes), and she has been designing and supporting public speaking curriculum for communication-across-the-disciplines since 2006, including developing and teaching public speaking specifically for communication majors, for childhood and early childhood education majors, for criminal justice majors, for international studies majors, and for dance and drama majors, as well as for honors program students, and for general education. She also instituted speech peer tutoring through a chapter of Phi Theta Kappa. Plus, she has taken 40 workshops and courses for public speaking and speech instruction. As a rhetorician with a strong education background in speech/human communication, her public speaking courses emphasize audience adaptation and argumentation in message creation and development, preparing students for communicating in civic life and assorted career paths. She uses real-world scenarios for speech assignments, game-based learning for skills development, modeling for comprehension, and entertainment media for casual learning. She also incorporates anxiety-management and mindfulness exercises as well as employment-seeking communication strategies into course content.
Education
She earned her PhD from the University at Albany (2005), concentrating in political communication and cultural sociology, with a research specialization in rhetorical criticism. Her dissertation was a study of “Providence, Presidents, and the Press: Inaugural Rhetoric of Religion in a Historical Perspective.” She also earned her MA in political communication from the University at Albany (2001). Her thesis, “Power Plays by the Powerless: A Study of Attempted Diffusion of Innovative Reforms by the New York Assembly Minority Conference,” was based on a graduate practicum with the New York State Assembly. She earned her BA in communication concentrating in public relations and minoring in journalism from SUNY New Paltz (2000), and an AA in liberal arts concentrating in social science from Finger Lakes Community College (1998). Additionally, she earned a Certificate of Advanced Study in Healthcare Management from SUNY Empire State University in 2023. Her education has provided a solid foundation in the humanities, social science, and business traditions in communication studies.
Work Experience
Dr. Knopf came to SUNY Cortland in August 2017. Before that, she worked at SUNY Potsdam from August 2006 to July 2017, where she was part of the Department of English & Communication and affiliate faculty to Women’s & Gender Studies and to Africana Studies, while also serving as Oral Skills Coordinator for the General Education Committee. Dr. Knopf taught at Monroe Community College and Genesee Community College in 2005, at the University at Albany from 2000 to 2005, and at the College of St. Rose in 2003. She has taught more than 30 distinct courses at the 100- (first-year) through 600- (graduate) levels in communication, rhetoric, discourse studies, and media studies, served on multiple thesis committees, sponsored internships, and advised hundreds of undergraduates majoring or minoring in communication studies, speech communication, or interdisciplinary studies.
Prior to entering higher education full time, she earned experience in technical writing and web design for small telecommunications software companies, in photojournalism for a regional newspaper, in public relations for a college, in political campaigning at the local and state level, and in government research in the New York State Assembly.
More
Dr. Knopf is a Wilson Scholar of the New York State Communication Association, a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Eastern Communication Association, a 2020 recipient of the Eastern Communication Association Past Officers’ Award, a 2017 recipient of the Finger Lakes Community College Outstanding Humanities Alumni Achievement Award, a 2017 recipient of the SUNY Potsdam President’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and a 2017 inductee of Phi Kappa Phi. She was a recipient of the 2023 Lucy Shelton Caswell Research Award from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. And Dr. Knopf earned “top paper” recognition from the Political Communication Interest Group of ECA in 2023, 2022, 2020, 2019, and 2016. She is also a member of Phi Theta Kappa and the National Honor Society.
She is a co-editor of the Routledge Advances in Comics Studies series, an editorial board member of the Home Front Studies journal, a past editorial board member of the Lambda Pi Eta Journal, and a standing peer reviewer for the Popular Culture Studies Journal.
Dr. Knopf is life member of the National Communication Association (NCA), Eastern Communication Association (ECA), New York State Communication Association (NYSCA), and Rhetoric Society of America (RSA). She is a also a founding member the Comics Studies Society (CSS), and member of the Media Ecology Association (MEA), the Institute of General Semantics (IGS), and the American Sociological Association (ASA). She is a past member of the American Political Science Association (APSA), the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA), the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), and the International Studies Association (ISA). She has held leadership, governance, and other service positions in NCA, ECA, NYSCA, MEA, and ASA.
She is a lifelong resident of New York State and has been part of the SUNY system continuously since 1997 as a student, staff member, and faculty affiliated with eight different SUNY campuses.
Learn more by viewing her academic portfolio here.
updated 12 March 2025