Dr. Bethany Keeley-Jonker

Dr. Bethany Keeley-Jonker loves thinking and talking about how messages change things in the world. “I love that I can read about a political or media controversy, or a new app, or a complex argument and have frameworks to help me make sense of it and give me something new to say, or a Christian way to approach the problem, or interesting questions to consider.”

What drew her to Trinity:

Keeley-Jonker was looking for a college with intellectual excitement across disciplines and between faculty and students. “I also wanted to be at a place where my intellectual community would join me in trying to connect ideas with my commitment to living my Christian faith.”

Research interests:

Keeley-Jonker is interested in both descriptive questions of how Christians have interacted with public life and normative questions of how they should. She has analyzed historical examples of religious talk from politicians, and political talk from religious leaders. She also enjoys thinking about how Christians can engage with popular media. A recent co-authored publication, for example, examines the variety of heroes and heroism available in the Star Wars universe and compares them to the different faith heroes described in Hebrews 11.

Another research strain gives special attention to the movement of feelings in public communication. “So much of our shared life is about shared and individual feelings. They are so important but also unpredictable, hard to describe and sometimes wildly divergent,” she explains. Relevant publications examine the role of feelings and affect in the public speaking classroom, and in presidential address.

When she’s not teaching:

Keeley-Jonker enjoys spending time with her husband and daughter. She also enjoys reading, sewing and “chill video games.” She sometimes contributes to church music with violin and vocals.

Keeley-Jonker recently retired from blogging quotation marks at www.unnecessaryquotes.com. She also regularly contributes to Think Christian, and her author page can be found here.

Keeley-Jonker, Bethany and Robert J Keeley. “What More Shall I Say?: Heroism in Hebrews 11 and Star Wars” in Theology and the Star Wars Universe. Ed. Benjamin Espinosa. Lexington Books. (2022) 37-48

Landau, Jamie and Bethany Keeley-Jonker. “Conductor of Public Feelings: an Affective-emotional Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s National Eulogy at Tuscan.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 104, no. 2, (2018): 166-188

Keeley-Jonker, Bethany. “In God (and Capitalism) We Trust: Identification through division in 1950s civil religion” in The Rhetoric of Civil Religion: Sinners, Saints, and Symbols ed. Jason Edwards and Joseph Valenzano. Lexington Books. (2016)

Keeley-Jonker, Bethany and Craig Mattson “Stop Talking That Way! An affective approach to uncanny speech in the Christian college classroom,” Christian Scholars Review 45, no 2. (2016): 143-158

Keeley, Bethany, Lanelle Wright, and Celeste Condit. “Functions of Health Fatalism: fatalistic talk as face saving, uncertainty management, stress relief and sense making.” Sociology of Health and Illness 31, no. 5 (2009): 734-737

Keeley, Bethany. “I May Not Get There With You: ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ as Epic Discourse.” Southern Communication Journal 73, no. 4 (2008): 280-294

National Communication Association
Rhetoric Society of America