Kathleen Hardesty

Associate Professor

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Dr. Kathleen Hardesty joined the faculty of Florida Polytechnic University in 2021 and currently teaches and coordinates the University’s technical writing curriculum. She has taught courses in professional and technical writing, document and visual design, digital media writing, and other communication topics at the university level since 2015. She also has more than 20 years of professional/technical writing and editing experience with a focus on the engineering industry.

Hardesty is the author of Violence, Silence, and Rhetorical Cultures of Champion-Building in Sports, a book in Routledge’s Studies in Rhetoric and Communication series. She has also published in various academic journals and regularly presents her research at professional association annual

Community Involvement

Board Member and Secretary, Davidson Haiti Foundation, 2022-current

Education

Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric, Texas Tech University, 2020
M.A. in English, Rhetoric and Composition, University of South Florida, 2013
M.A. in International Affairs, The George Washington University, 2002
B.A. in English, Marshall University, 2000
B.A. in International Affairs, Marshall University, 2000

Expertise

Technical and professional communication
Visual design and visual rhetoric
Data visualization and information design
Qualitative research methods
Sports rhetoric

Professional Activities

Member, Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication
Member, Association for Business Communication
Member, Rhetoric Society of America

Select Publications

Hardesty, K. S., & Heilig, L. When writing hurts: Positionality, recovery, and distance when forming and maintaining a research identity. In Storied practices: Positionality in writing studies. WAC Clearinghouse. Forthcoming.
Heilig, L., & Hardesty, K. S. (2024). Acceptable thresholds: Learning from critical disability methodology to inform embodied, qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 23. DOI: 10.1177/16094069241257938
Hardesty, K. S. (2023). Violence, silence, and rhetorical cultures of champion-building in sports. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003349846
Hardesty, K. S., & Hollinger, A. (2020). Uncommonly common: Reconsidering creativity and beauty in technical communication. Technical Communication, 67(4), 28–48.
Hardesty, K. S., & Hardesty, C. (2020). Math matters in communication: Manipulation and misrepresentation in data displays. IEEE ProComm, 61–67. DOI: 10.1109/ProComm48883.2020.00016