The College of Communication & Fine Arts is proud to feature an illustrious group of distinguished professors who have earned national and international acclaim in their fields, and continue to make significant scholarly and creative contributions in their discipline.
Von der Ahe Chair in Communication and Ethics
The Von der Ahe Chair in Communication and Ethics is one of six ethics chair positions (social values, bioethics, business, accounting, engineering, & communication) designed to provide leadership to develop a strong focus on theoretical and applied ethics for students in film, television, screenwriting, and communication studies... The chairs' appointments have been bestowed upon individuals with the highest levels of achievement, with national and international distinction, in their particular areas of ethics expertise beyond those of a tenured full professor, with the potential and drive to serve in a leadership capacity in their respective colleges and the university at large on issues linked with applied ethics across the curriculum. Professor Lawrence Wenner's position as the Von der Ahe Chair in Communication and Ethics is a joint appointment in both the College of Communication and Fine Arts and the School of Film and Television.
Lawrence Wenner
Von der Ahe Chair of Communication & Ethics
Lawrence A. Wenner (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1977) is the Von der Ahe Professor of Communication and Ethics in the College of Communication and Fine Arts and the School of Film and Television at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he directs the Forum on Media Ethics and Social Responsibility and teaches media ethics in Philosophy and narrative ethics in the University Honors Program. His earlier notable appointments include serving as the William Evans Fellow at the University of Otago, the Diederich Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Marquette University, the Louise Davies Professor of Contemporary Values in America at the University of San Francisco, and as a University Fellow at the University of Iowa. He has served as Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Executive Director of the Graduate Program in Sports and Fitness Management, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of San Francisco.
Wenner was honored in 2018 with the International Communication Association, Sport Communication Interest Group’s inaugural Legacy Award. This award honors a scholar who has significantly shaped the field of sports communication for the better, and is awarded only when the committee believes a nomination is warranted. Also in 2018, the Wenner-founded and edited journal Communication and Sport won a 2018 PROSE award for “Best New Journal in Social Sciences” from the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.
Wenner’s research includes nine books and approximately 130 scholarly journal articles and book chapters. He has lectured in more than 30 countries on research focusing on critical assessments of media content, ethical dimensions of race and gender portrayals in advertising, audience experiences with television in the family context, and the values and consumption of mediated sports. Wenner’s notable books include Media, Sports and Society, MediaSport, and Critical Approaches to Television (2nd edition with Leah VandeBerg and Bruce Gronbeck).
His recent book, Sport, Beer, and Gender: Promotional Culture and Contemporary Social Life (with Steven Jackson), explores how mixing beer and masculinity are integral to contemporary commodified sport. A more recent book, Fallen Sports Heroes, Media, and Celebrity Culture, examines the dynamic and moral meaning of sporting celebrityhood gone bad. His most recent book, with Andrew Billings, Sport, Media and Mega-Events considers how media coverage of sporting mega-events have changed the events themselves and their host cities. Wenner is founding Editor-in-Chief of the bi-monthly scholarly journal Communication & Sport, and is a former two-term Editor-in-Chief of both the International Review for the Sociology of Sport and the Journal of Sport and Social Issues.He has edited special issues of American Behavioral Scientist and the Journal of Sport Management on sport communication, currently sits on six journal editorial boards, and has served on numerous other journal editorial boards in media and communication studies, sport studies, sociology, and management. With Andrew Billings and Marie Hardin, Wenner edits the “Studies in Communication and Sport” book series for the Peter Lang Publishing Group. Wenner is featured in Intellect Books Who’s Who in Research: Media Studies and the University of Nebraska Press’ Journal of Sports Media has characterized him as such a “heavy hitter in the world of sport research” that he “may be the most prolific and accomplished scholar in the field.” A commemorative panel featured at the annual conference of the International Association for Communication and Sport honored the silver (25th) anniversary of the publication of his anthology Media, Sports, and Society for being foundational in establishing the scholarly study of media, communication and sport.
Reports on his research and media interviews with Wenner have appeared with CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Network, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, New Zealand Television One, KGO-TV, KTVU, KQED, KIWI-FM, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Washington Post, Financial Times, Newsday, Boston Herald, Hartford Gazette, San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Democrat, Denver Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Detroit News, San Antonio Express-News, Otago Daily Times, New Zealand Herald, Sports Illustrated, Daily Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Le Journal du Dimanche, Working Woman, George, Bloomberg Business Week, Prevention and other outlets. In leisure, he plays tennis, sails, bikes, and boards on surf, snow, and skate.