Michael Svoboda

Michael Svoboda joined GW’s University Writing Program in 2005, shortly after earning his interdisciplinary PhD from Penn State University, where he had also owned and operated a bookstore for 17 years. His work in two very different research programs—ancient Greek rhetoric and environmental communication—has been published in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Rhetoric Review, Rhetorica, Review of Communication, Research in Philosophy & Technology, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Plagiary, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society, Environmental Communication, and WIREs Climate Change. In 2010, he became a regular contributor to Yale Climate Connections for which he now also curates a monthly “bookshelf.” Since 2013, he has worked with GW’s Sustainability Minor, serving a term as director and then continuing as part of the team teaching the introductory course. Communicating Climate Change is the UW 1020 course that Prof. Svoboda developed out of his environmental work. During election years, however, he teaches The Political Brain, a UW 1020 course that examines the social-psychological underpinnings of our political choices and identities. Prof. Svoboda’s most recent work combines these interests in politics and the environment with the study of popular culture. In 2020, he updated his 2016 survey of fictional films about climate change. His current project is a broader study of the intersections among popular culture, climate change, and American politics.

Professor Svoboda is an affiliated faculty member of the Global Food Institute at GW.