Wendy Atkins-Sayre

Wendy Atkins-Sayre (PhD, University of Georgia) is Professor of Communication Studies and Chair of the Department of Communication & Film at the University of Memphis. Her research centers on identity as constructed through discourse, with an emphasis on regional and social movement studies. Her most recent book, edited with Ashli Q. Stokes of University of North Carolina-Charlotte, explores the American urban/rural divide: City Places, Country Spaces: Rhetorical Explorations of the Urban/Rural Divide (Peter Lang, 2020). Co-written with Stokes, Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefining the South (University of Mississippi Press, 2016), explores the role that food plays in creating Southern identity. Atkins-Sayre also co-edited, with Esther Lee Yook, Communication Centers and Oral Communication Programs in Higher Education: Advantages, Challenges, and New Directions and Communicating Advice: Peer Tutoring and Communication Practice. She has also published in Western Journal of Communication, Southern Communication Journal, Public Relations Inquiry, Women & Language, and in many edited volumes.