Notable Achievements

Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar has published an article titled “Roadside Media: Roadside Crash Shrines as Platforms for Communicating Across Time, Space, and Mortality in the Early 2000s United States” in Cultural and Social History, The Journal of the Social History Society. The article traces the recent history of roadside shrines to show that they are not only entangled with other contemporary media forms but have also developed into miniaturized and materialized social media platforms. The article officially comes out in print later this winter and is now available here.

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Expertise

Visual Culture, Visual Communication, Cultural Studies of Mass Media & Everyday Life, Public Memory, Trauma Studies, Automobility, Affect Theory, Material Culture, Tourism, Landscape & Built Environment, Design & Culture, Film Theory/Practice, Environmental Studies, American Studies, Contemporary U.S. Cultural History

Bob Bednar received his PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997, his MA in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991, and his BA in American Studies from Southwestern University in 1989.

  • Bob Bednar received his PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997, his MA in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991, and his BA in American Studies from Southwestern University in 1989.

  • Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

    Bednar, Robert M. 2013. “Killing Memory: Roadside Memorials and the Necropolitics of Affect,” Cultural Politics vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 337-356.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2011. “Materialising Memory: The Public Lives of Roadside Crash Shrines,” Memory Connection, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 18-33. [Lead Article] Located at URL: http://www.memoryconnection.org/article/materialising-memory-the-public-lives-of-roadside-crash-shrines-2/

    Peer-Reviewed Chapters in Edited Scholarly Books

    Bednar, Robert M. 2015. “Placing Affect: Remembering Strangers at Roadside Crash Shrines,” in Christine Berberich, Neil Campbell, and Robert Hudson (eds.), Affective Landscapes in Literature, Art and Everyday Life: Memory, Place and the Senses (Farnham, UK: Ashgate), pp. 49-67.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2012. “Being Here, Looking There: Mediating Vistas in the National Parks of the Contemporary American West,” in Thomas Patin (ed.), Observation Points: The Visual Poetics of National Parks (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 1-28.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2011. “Denying Denial: Trauma, Memory, and Automobility at Roadside Car Crash Shrines” in Anne T. Demo and Bradford Vivian (eds.), Rhetoric, Remembrance, and Visual Form: Sighting Memory (London: Routledge Press), pp. 128-145.

    Bednar, Robert M. 1996. “Searching For an Old Faithful America: National Park Tourism in the 1970s,” In Elsebeth Harup (ed.), The Lost Decade: America in the 1970s (Aarhus, Denmark: University of Aarhus Press), pp. 53-78.

    Invited Chapters in Edited Scholarly Books

    Bednar, Robert M. 2011. “Making Space on the Side of the Road: Towards a Cultural Study of Roadside Car Crash Shrines,” in Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader (eds.), The World is a Text: Writing, Reading, and Thinking About Culture and Its Contexts, 4th Edition (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall), pp. 222-234.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2011. “How I Wrote This Essay,” in Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader (eds.), The World is a Text: Writing, Reading, and Thinking About Culture and Its Contexts, 4th Edition (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall), pp. 235-238.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2009. “Roadside Memorials and the Public Health,” in Sarah Earle, Caroline Bartholomew and Carol Komaromy (eds.), Making Sense of Death, Dying and Bereavement: An Anthology (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press), pp. 22-23.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2009. “Making Space on the Side of the Road: Towards a Cultural Study of Roadside Car Crash Shrines,” in Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader (eds.), The World is a Text: Writing, Reading, and Thinking About Culture and Its Contexts, 3rd Edition (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall), pp. 497-508.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2006. “Caught Looking: Problems With Taking Pictures of People Taking Pictures at an Exhibition,” in Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader (eds.), The World is a Text: Writing, Reading, and Thinking About Culture and Its Contexts 2nd Edition (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall), pp. 206-210.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2003. “Caught Looking: Problems With Taking Pictures of People Taking Pictures at an Exhibition,” In Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader (eds.), The World is a Text: Writing, Reading, and Thinking About Culture and Its Contexts (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall), pp. 224-229.

    Popular Media Publications Based on Scholarly Work

    Bednar, Robert M. 2013. “Roadside Memorials: A Search for Meaning,” Austin-American Statesman, March 31, 2013.

    Bednar, Robert M. 2013. “Between the Windshield and the Rearview,” The End of Austin: An Exploration of Urban Identity in the Middle of Texas, January 2013. Located at URL: http://endofaustin.com/2013/01/10/between-the-windshield-and-the-rearview/


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