Bryan Crable, Ph.D. (Purdue University, Philosophy and Communication) is Founding Dean of the College of Human Development, Culture, and Media at Seton Hall University, and within the College holds an appointment as Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts. Prior to that appointment, Dr. Crable served as Professor of Communication/Rhetorical Studies and Founding Director of the Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society (WFI) at Villanova University. Through the activities of the WFI, Dr. Crable helped highlight and celebrate the connection between communication and social justice—and helped support a number of programs aimed at diversifying higher education. In addition to his institutional and disciplinary service, Dr. Crable is the author of numerous articles and chapters on rhetorical theory and rhetorics of race, as well as two books, Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke: At the Roots of the Racial Divide (University of Virginia Press, 2012) and Transcendence by Perspective: Meditations on and with Kenneth Burke (edited volume; Parlor Press, 2014). His scholarship has twice earned the Charles Kneupper Award from the Rhetoric Society of America, Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Veritas Award for Excellence in Research, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kenneth Burke Society. His teaching and mentorship have also been recognized with Villanova University’s 2021 Outstanding Faculty Mentor Teaching Award, three nominations for the National Communication Association’s top teaching award, and the 2016 Faculty Mentor Award from Villanova University’s Honors Program. His forthcoming book, White Sacraments, draws upon archival materials from both Ralph Ellison and Jane Ellen Harrison to retheorize American white supremacy as a sacramental ritual structure and practice.
