Dana L. Cloud is an American communication professor. Cloud's primary research focuses on rhetoric, cultural theory, gender theory, and queer theory. She is best known for her 1998 book Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetoric of Therapy in which she coined the term "rhetoric of therapy".

Early life

At Pennsylvania State University, Cloud received her B.A./B.S. English and telecommunications double major in 1986. Cloud received her M.A. in rhetorical studies from the University of Iowa in 1989. In 1992, she received her Ph.D. in Rhetorical Studies from the department of communication studies at the University of Iowa.

Career

Cloud was a faculty member in the department of communication studies, part of the Center for Women's and Gender Studies and the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, from January 1993 to August 2015. Cloud served as the director of graduate studies in department of communication Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, from August 2008–2015.^[1]

From August 2015 to May 2019, Cloud was a professor and the director of graduate studies at Syracuse University.

Cloud, who was a communications and rhetorical studies professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse, is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (against Israel) movement and describes her views as radical liberalism. She has been named to various "blacklists" of professors during her career. In the Acknowledgements section of Reality Bites she acknowledges her "comrades" in the International Socialist Organization.^[2]

Works

Cloud’s research interests include critical rhetorical and cultural studies, including Marxist theory, feminist theory, public sphere theory, and postmodernism; the rhetoric of social movements; representations of sex, gender, and race in popular media; activist scholarship; and scholarship about activism.^[3]

• 1998: Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetoric of Therapy. SAGE Publications.
• 2011: We are the Union: Democratic Dissent at Boeing. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• 2018: Reality Bites: Rhetoric and the Circulation of Truth Claims in U.S. Political Culture. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.