Charlotte Thralls Honored for Full Professorship

Charlotte Thralls Honored for Full Professorship

Utah State University's administration honored professor Charlotte Thralls March 17 at the University Residence in the presence of family, friends and colleagues as part of the Inaugural Professor lecture series.

Thralls, who has been a part of Utah State's English department for three years, was recently promoted to full professor.

"There wasn't even the slightest undercurrent of question when we hired Charie," said English department head Jeffrey Smitten during his introduction of Thralls. "Charie does a lot of things, and she does them all perfectly."

After introductions from Provost Stan Albrecht and Smitten, Thralls shared history and insight from her career, including various approaches she has used in writing.

"Writing used to be viewed as a mere conduit," Thralls said, with grammar and "good sentences" as a way of describing effective writing. "Now people are thinking in far more complex ways about writing and the practical texts people produce in workplaces, professions and the disciplines."

Thralls explained several methods and theories about writing but focused on the most influential writing approach in her career, cultural studies, which examines texts as an important resource for shaping knowledge and identity. A major idea behind cultural study is the concept of articulation, which Thralls defined as a contingent connection. The idea behind articulation, she said, is that the objects and practices around us do not come with their meanings and effects built in. "A stone can be a boundary marker or a sculpture," Thralls said, and added that articulation in a way of explaining how understandings of cultural practices and discourses occur.

Thralls illustrated this concept with a case study she conducted on Mary Kay Cosmetics, showing how the corporate identity was formed. She also discussed the historical conditions that allowed the Mary Kay corporate identity to emerge the way it did and the process whereby women recruited to the company might find the corporate discourse effective.

"The upshot of my work is to show that the meanings and effects of a text, or cultural practice, or corporate discourse, like that of Mary Kay, cannot be attributed to intrinsic properties and are not guaranteed in advance," Thralls said. "Instead, meanings and effects are constantly made and remade, emerging through the way in which various elements are articulated—or linked up—in a complex set of relations at a particular moment."

Thralls, who earned her master's and doctorate in American Studies from Purdue University, taught for 20 years at Iowa State University before coming to Utah State in 2001. She was the founding editor of the Journal of Business and Technical Communication and currently co-edits Technical Communication Quarterly, and has received many distinguished awards throughout her career for her research and teaching.

For more information about the Inaugural Professor Lecture series, contact Chris Fawson at (435) 797-0979.