A Burkean rhetorical theorist, Elizabeth Weiser studies the dynamic between identification and division in civic life. Her current project, Just Restoration: Rhetoric and Reconciliation in American Museums, examines a dozen new museums run by diverse communities in the U.S. heartland that tell traumatic histories in a manner promoting healing–a noteworthy trend in an era of calls to stifle all such “divisive concepts” from other public education forums. Her book Museum Rhetoric: Building Civic Identities in National Spaces (2017) looked at the formation of national identity in some 60 museums in 22 countries to posit a cultural nationalism that is both critical and celebratory. Burke, War, Words (2008) traced the development of the call to the dialectic in modern rhetoric as a response to the Second World War. Weiser is also the co-editor of four books, and she has published numerous articles and chapters in journals and monographs in the fields of rhetoric, museum studies, linguistics and education. 

She is the only American on the Executive Board of the International Committee for Museology (ICOFOM), the museum studies arm of the world’s largest network of museum professionals and scholars, the International Council of Museums (ICOM). She serves as editor-in-chief of ICOFOM publications, including its biannual journal. On the Newark campus, Weiser teaches rhetorical studies and writing, serves on multiple committees, and in 2022-23 served as the campus DEI Fellow as well as its P&T chair.

Selected Publications

• George, Ann, and Elizabeth Weiser, eds. (2023). In the Classroom with Kenneth Burke. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.
• Weiser, Elizabeth, Timothy Jordan, and Richard Shiels. (2023). The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos: Reflections on the Newark Earthworks and World Heritage.Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.
• Museum Rhetoric: Building Civic Identity in National Spaces. Old Mian: Penn State UP, 2017.
• Burke, War, Words: Rhetoricizing Dramatism. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2008.
• George, Ann, Elizabeth Weiser, and Janet Zepernick, eds. Women and Rhetoric between the Wars. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2013.
• Weiser, Elizabeth, Brian Fehler, and Angela Gonzalez, eds. Engaging Audience: Writing in an Age of New Literacies. Urbana: NCTE Press, 2009.

Curriculum Vitae