Bio
Courses I am teaching
ENGL 3020: Business Communication
ENGL 3140: Technical Communication
ENGL 3320: Visual Communication of Quantitative Information (cross-listed with Statistics)
ENGL 3530: World Literature: Western Foundations through Renaissance
ENGL 3540: World Literature: Seventeenth through Twentieth-Century
ENGL 4160: Graphic Communication in Business and Technical Writing
ENGL 5080: Writing for Academic Publication
ENGL 5860: Visual Rhetoric in Professional Communication
Degrees
BArch, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
MA, English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Research areas
Visual communication; data visualization; history of visual rhetoric in professional communication; literature and visual art.
Recent publications
“Pervasive and Perplexing Pies: Our Evolving Relationship with a Data Display Genre.” Information Design Journal 25.2 (2019): 192-213.
Humanizing Visual Design: The Rhetoric of Human Forms in Practical Communication. New York and London: Routledge, 2019.
“Social and Cultural Aspects of Visual Conventions in Information Design: The Rhetoric of Hierarchy.” Information Design: Research and Practice. Eds. Alison Black, Paul Luna, Ole Lund, and Sue Walker. London: Routledge, 2017. 257-73
“The Re-Emergence of Emotional Appeals in Interactive Data Visualization.” Technical Communication 63.2 (2016): 116-35.
Kimball, Miles, and Charles Kostelnick, eds. Visible Numbers: Essays on the History of Statistical Graphics. Surry, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2016.
“Mosaics, Culture, and Rhetorical Resiliency: The Convoluted Genealogy of a Data Display Genre.” Visible Numbers: Essays on the History of Statistical Graphics. Eds. Miles Kimball and Charles Kostelnick. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2016. 177-206
Kostelnick, Charles, and John Kostelnick. “Online Visualizations of Natural Disasters and Hazards: The Rhetorical Dynamics of Charting Risk.” Science and the Internet: Communicating Knowledge in a Digital Age, ed. Alan G. Gross and Jonathan Buehl. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 2016. 157-90
“Teaching Students to Design Rhetorically: A Low-Tech Process Approach.” Designing Texts: Teaching Visual Communication. Ed. Eva R. Brumberger and Kathryn M. Northcutt. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing, 2013. 265-81
“Visualizing Technology and Practical Knowledge in the Encyclopédie ’s Plates: Rhetoric, Drawing Conventions, and Enlightenment Values.” History and Technology 28.4 (2012): 443-54
“Seeing Difference: Teaching Intercultural Communication through Visual Rhetoric.” Teaching Intercultural Rhetoric and Technical Communication: Theories, Curriculum, Pedagogies, and Practices. Ed. Barry Thatcher and Kirk St. Amant. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing, 2011. 31-48
Kostelnick, Charles, and David D. Roberts. Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Longman/Pearson, 2011.
“The Visual Rhetoric of Data Displays: The Conundrum of Clarity.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 51.1 (2008): 116-130
Current research
Visual aesthetics in technical communication.