Zo毛 Hess Carney
Zoë Hess Carney is a scholar of public address whose research focuses on U.S. and transnational political communication. Her dissertation developed a model for understanding presidential rhetoric in a post-Cold War global era. She is also a communication strategist with experience in marketing and trial consulting. Her academic and professional experiences strengthen her commitment to teaching students how to think critically and communicate ethically.
Carney designs her courses around the idea that communication is a citizen-making discipline. As such, she guides students in how to evaluate messages, engage in dialogue, and produce persuasive messages. Moreover, Carney focuses on how contemporary problems facing our nation and world connect to the past, teaching students how to trace rhetorical histories through textual analysis and archival research.
Education
Ph.D., Georgia State University, Communication (Rhetoric & Politics)
M.A., Texas A&M University, Communication (Rhetoric & Public Affairs)
B.A., Texas A&M University, Communication, Spanish minor
Recent Work
Recent Publications:
Carney, Zoë Hess and Rita Kirk. “Texas 2022 Midterm Campaign Strategy: Selling Fear Online” (2025), accepted for publication in Media Messages in the 2022 Midterm Elections: Edited Volume, ed. Daniel Schill and John Hendricks.
Carney, Zoë Hess. “2016 Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act,” invited encyclopedia entry for Feminism and Feminist Movements in America: An Encyclopedia of Ideas and Activism (ed: Sarah Kornfield, Bloomsbury Press), 2025.
Carney, Zoë Hess. “2016 Women’s March on Washington,” invited encyclopedia entry for Feminism and Feminist Movements in America: An Encyclopedia of Ideas and Activism (ed: Sarah Kornfield, Bloomsbury Press), 2025.
Carney, Zoë Hess. “Obama’s Transformation of American Myths,” in Neo-Race Realities in the Obama Era, ed. Heather Harris (New York: SUNY Press, 2019), 3 – 22.
Carney, Zoë Hess and Xiaobo Wang. “‘Oba-Mao’: The Synthesis of National Leaders as Transnational Rhetorical Resources,” China Media Research 15 (1), 2019: 23 – 33.
Carney, Zoë Hess and Allison M. Prasch. “A Journey for Peace”: Spatial Metaphors and Nixon’s 1972 ‘Opening to China,’” Presidential Studies Quarterly 47 (4), 2017: 163 – 664.
Carney, Zoë Hess and Mary E. Stuckey. “The World as the American Frontier: Racialized Presidential War Rhetoric,” Southern Communication Journal 80 (3), 2015: 163 – 188. Winner of the Rose B. Johnson Award.
Course list
| Free Speech and the First Amendment | |
| Principles of Political Communication | |
| Presidential Rhetoric | |
| Public Speaking | |
| Communication Theory |
