Stephanie A. Martin

Assistant Professor of Corporate Communication and Public Affairs, Southern Methodist University

Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin brings nearly 20 years of experience in corporate, media and political (campaign) work to bear in her research, which investigates the discourse of conservative social movements in the contemporary United States. She is especially interested in how political rhetorics about fiscal issues intersect with political rhetorics about social issues, and so work to reinforce one another. She is currently writing a book that explores how evangelicals have used news and other forms of mass media to promote government policies of fiscal conservatism and personal responsibility for ameliorating economic hardship in the aftermath of the national recession of 2008, and have agitated against increased spending on public welfare programs. The book also examines how the public discourse (and political priorities) of evangelicals is not only about abortion and other such cultural hot-button issues, but includes a preference for conservative economic policymaking, as well.

Martin has written journal articles and book chapters about conservative social and economic discourse in the United States. She is also interested in First Amendment jurisprudence.

Martin worked for her first political campaign in the summer between her senior year of high school and first year of college, when she volunteered at a phone bank for a candidate to the United States Senate from her home state of Idaho. Since that time she has remained an active participant in and observer of the United States political process and has worked on both national and statewide campaigns. As a media practitioner, Martin served as a project coordinator and staff writer for a PBS affiliate in Washington, D.C., and has also written extensively for several business-to-business publications sponsored by General Motors. She began her career as a project manager and industrial engineer, first for the Boeing Company and then for Hewlett-Packard.

As a teacher, Martin is deeply committed to helping students discover their own voices, as well as find ways to make their classroom experiences apply to their everyday, practical (and professional) lives. She encourages her students to apply their education to questions of social justice wherever they can, and to believe in the always-revolutionary notion that one person can make a real difference in the world.