Kaitlin Graves

About

Kaitlin Graves (rhetorical studies, cultural studies and psychoanalysis) studies the relationship between popular music, especially rock and roll music, and cultural politics. She is particularly interested in the affective dimensions of rock including both the sensations and experience of being in live music settings as well as the psychic economies of public desire and ideology. She received her MA in Communication Studies from Florida Atlantic University. Her MA thesis, "No Surrender: Bruce Springsteen, Neoliberalism and Rock and Roll's Melancholic Fantasy of Sovereign Rebellion" examined ways that calls to revive rock, or to live a rock (star) life, reinforce disturbing aspects of freedom restricting neoliberal mindsets. Her dissertation, “Deafening Roars That Awakened The People Like Never Before: Children’s Literature, Rock Music, and Ambivalent Governance” studies the way that new, and often unconventional, expectations, of public speech and decorum are conditioned through contemporary children’s literature, in particular books that use tock and roll culture as its source code for pedagogical work.

Kaitlin has presented her work at several venues including the Southern States Speech Convention, the Rhetoric Society of America Convention and the National Communication Association Conventions as well as published in the journal of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies.

Education

M.A. Communication Studies, Florida Atlantic University
B.A. Communication Studies, Florida Atlantic University
Ph. D Communication Studies, University of Memphis (anticipated graduation Fall 2025)

Email: kgraves2@fau.edu

Courses