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About Me

Cara Finnegan studies the role of photography in U.S. public life. She is Professor of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches and does research in the history of photography, rhetoric, media, and political communication. She is the author of Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital (University of Illinois Press, 2021), Making Photography Matter: A Viewer’s History from the Civil War to the Great Depression (University of Illinois Press, 2015), and Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs (Smithsonian Books, 2003). Finnegan’s ideas about photography have been featured in a variety of publications in the fields of Communication and U.S. History, as well as in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, the BBC, Vox, and USA Today. Finnegan is co-host of Chatting the Pictures, a webcast analyzing news photos that is produced by the nonprofit media literacy site Reading the Pictures. She is also a book coach who works with academics who want to draw on their scholarly expertise to write fiction and memoir. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Finnegan received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has worked at the University of Illinois since 1999.

Recent Publications

Cara A. Finnegan, Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital (University of Illinois Press, 2021)

Cara A. Finnegan, Making Photography Matter: A Viewer’s History from the Civil War to the Great Depression (University of Illinois Press, 2015)

Cara A. Finnegan, Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs (Smithsonian Books, 2003)

Cara A. Finnegan and Anita J. Mixon, “Art Controversy in the Obama White House: Performing Tensions of Race in the Visual Politics of the Presidency.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 44.2 (June 2014): 244-66.

Cara A. Finnegan, “Picturing Presidents: Visual Politics Inside the Obama White House.” In The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency, eds. Jennifer Mercieca and Justin Vaughn (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2014), 209-34.

Media Coverage

New York Times, Politico, The Independent, Chatting the Pictures (https://www.readingthepictures.org/category/program/chatting-the-pictures/), Vox, Boston Globe, USA Today, BBC, CBS, Chicago Public Radio, Le Monde

Social Media

@carafinnegan

Country Focus

United States

Expertise by Geography

North America, United States

Expertise by Chronology

19th century, Early Modern, Modern, 20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

American Civil War, American Presidents, Art & Architectural History, Libraries & Archives, Material Culture, Museums, Pedagogy, Politics, Public History