Sean Zdenek, PhD
Access · Sound · Rhetoric · Captioning · Film/Media
Associate Professor of Technical and Professional Writing
University of Delaware
book
Reading Sounds: Closed-Captioned Media and Popular Culture
University of Chicago Press, 2015 · ReadingSounds.net
A rhetorical analysis of closed captioning in popular culture — exploring how captions construct meaning, represent sound, and shape our experience of media.
Winner: 2017 Best Book in Technical or Scientific Communication, CCCC/NCTE
View at University of Chicago Press
biography
Dr. Sean Zdenek is an associate professor of technical and professional writing at the University of Delaware. His research and teaching interests include technical writing, disability studies, sound studies, and rhetorical theory. His book, Reading Sounds: Closed-Captioned Media and Popular Culture (UChicago, 2015), won the 2017 award for best book in technical or scientific communication from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC).
Sean grew up in California and currently lives in northeastern Maryland, a few miles from both Delaware and Pennsylvania.
selected publications
Zdenek, Sean (2020). Transforming Access and Inclusion in Composition Studies and Technical Communication. College English 82(5), 536–44.
Zdenek, Sean (2018). Guest Editor’s Introduction: Reimagining Disability and Accessibility in Technical and Professional Communication. Communication Design Quarterly 6(4), 4–11.
Zdenek, Sean (2018). Designing Captions: Disruptive Experiments with Typography, Color, Icons, and Effects. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 23(1).
Zdenek, Sean (2011). Which Sounds Are Significant? Towards a Rhetoric of Closed Captioning. Disability Studies Quarterly 31(3).
Zdenek, Sean (2009). Accessible Podcasting: College Students on the Margins in the New Media Classroom. Computers & Composition Online. (PDF)
blog posts
Occasional writing on captioning, disability, film, and whatever Hypnotoad demands.
Browse all posts