Biography
Nora Singer, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Communication and Coordinator of SVSU PRIDE, the university's LGBTQIA+ student programming and support center. She is an award-winning teacher and researcher who specializes in the study of modern social movements from a rhetorical perspective, especially U.S. environmental and food movement struggles for justice, health, and sustainability.
Singer is the lead co-author of Rooted Resistance: Agrarian Myth in Modern America, a book focused on the evolution and cultural politics of public storytelling about sustainable and just food. The monograph was published in 2020 by University of Arkansas Press and released as an audiobook in 2021. Professor Singer's research has been published in major international and national communication journals such as Communication Theory, Communication, Culture & Critique, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Critical Studies in Media Communication.
Norie recently held the position of Associate Editor of Environmental Communication, an influential international academic journal focused on the many intersections among communication, media, society, and environmental issues. Singer is a past recipient of the National Communication Association's Christine L. Oravec Research Award in Environmental Communication and was President/Chair of NCA's Environmental Communication Division. From 2020 to 2023, Singer was a Ruth and Ted Braun Research Fellow at SVSU.
Education
Bowling Green State University
Master of Arts
Central Michigan University
Bachelor of Arts
Central Michigan University
Teaching Interests
Singer's courses examine various public communication issues, including but not limited to message strategies, ethical dilemmas, ideology and power, corporate-consumer culture, and democracy in the public sphere. Norie teaches courses on rhetoric in civic life, argumentation and debate, persuasion and attitude change, media and society, social movement communication, and communication theory.
Research
Selected Works (most of Dr. Singer's research articles can be found at www.academia.edu)
Norie R. Singer, "Intersectional Ecofeminist Food Rhetoric," in The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminist Rhetoric, eds. Jacqueline Rhodes and Suban Nur Cooley (New York: Routledge, 2025), 216-25.
Norie R. Singer, "Affect and Melodramatic Resistance," Quarterly Journal of Speech 110, no. 1 (2024): 120-29.
Norie R. Singer and Silje Kristiansen, “Communicating Transformation in Food and Agricultural Ecologies” [co-editors' special issue introduction], Environmental Communication 17, no. 8 (2023): 861-67.
Norie R. Singer, “Toward Intersectional Ecofeminist Communication Studies,” Communication Theory 30, no. 3 (2020): 268-89.
Norie R. Singer, Stephanie Houston Grey, and Jeff Motter, Rooted Resistance: Agrarian Myth in Modern America (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2020).
Leadership
Past Associate Editor, Environmental Communication
Former President/Chair, Environmental Communication Division, National Communication Association
Past member, National Communication Association Legislative Assembly
Past Humanities Faculty Representative, SVSU General Education Standing Committee
Honors and Awards
Ruth and Ted Braun Research Fellowship, SVSU, 2020-2023
Top Faculty Paper, National Communication Association Environmental Communication Division, 2018
Christine L. Oravec Research Award, Top Article or Book Chapter, National Communication Association, Environmental Communication Division, 2010