Dr. Michael L. Butterworth (Ph.D., Indiana University, 2006) is the Director of the Center for Sports Communication & Media, the Governor Ann W. Richards Chair for the Texas Program in Sports and Media, and Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

His research explores the connections between rhetoric, democracy, and sport, with particular interests in national identity, militarism, and public memory. He is the author of Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity: The National Pastime and American Identity during the War on Terror, co-author (with Andrew Billings and Paul Turman) of Communication and Sport: Surveying the Field, editor of Sport and Militarism: Contemporary Global Perspectives and The Handbook of Communication and Sport, and co-editor (with Daniel A. Grano) of Sport, Rhetoric, and Political Struggle and Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas (with Adriana Angel and Nancy Gómez). Dr. Butterworth’s essays have appeared in journals such as Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication and Sport, Communication, Culture & Critique, Critical Studies in Media Communication, the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, the Journal of Communication, the Journal of Sport & Social Issues, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Rhetoric & Public Affairs.

Dr. Butterworth serves as Chair of the Sport Communication Interest Group for the International Communication Association. He previously served as the Chair of the Communication and Sport Division for the National Communication Association and was the Founding Executive Director of the International Association for Communication and Sport.

Dr. Butterworth earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Public Culture at Indiana University-Bloomington and has an M.A. in Communication and a B.A. in Political Science from Northern Illinois University. He is an avid Chicago Cubs fan and can easily be distracted with conversations about sports, politics, and music.