Frederick Turner

Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and Professor, by courtesy, of Art and Art History and of History

Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, Communication (2002)
M.A., Columbia University, English and American Literature (1985)
B.A, Brown University, Magna Cum Laude, in English and American Literature (1984)
Academic Appointments
Professor, Communication
Professor (By courtesy), Art & Art History
Professor (By courtesy), History
Faculty Affiliate, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
Affiliated Faculty Member, Program in Symbolic Systems, Stanford University
Affiliated Faculty Member, Program in American Studies, Stanford University
Affiliated Faculty Member, Program in Urban Studies, Stanford University
Affiliated Faculty Member, Program in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University
Affiliated Faculty Member, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Stanford University
Member, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Member, International Communication Association
Member, Society for Social Studies of Science
Member, IT History Society
Member, American Sociological Association
Honors & Awards
Katherine Singer Kovács Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2013)
Media@McGill Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada (2013)
The CITASA Book Award Special Mention, CITASA (2008)
Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award for Excellence, Association of American Publishers (2007)
The James W. Carey Media Research Award, Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research (2007)
The Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics, Media Ecology Association (2007)
Outstanding Paper Award, Communication and Information Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association (2006)
Winner, National Student Essay Contest, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (2001)
Nominated for a Faculty Appreciation Award, Sloan School of Management, MIT (2000)
The Bennett Cerf Prize, Columbia University (1985)
Fred Turner’s research and teaching focus on media technology and cultural change. He is especially interested in the ways that emerging media have helped shape American life since World War II.

Turner is the author of three books: The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties; From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism; and Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory. His essays have tackled topics ranging from the rise of reality crime television to the role of the Burning Man festival in contemporary new media industries. They are available here: fredturner.stanford.edu/essays/.

Turner’s research has received a number of academic awards and has been featured in publications ranging from Science and the New York Times to Ten Zen Monkeys. It has also been translated into French, Spanish, German, Polish and Chinese.

Turner is also the Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. Before joining the faculty at Stanford, Turner taught Communication at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also worked as a freelance journalist for ten years, writing for the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine, the Boston Phoenix, and the Pacific News Service.

Turner earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego. He has also earned a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brown University and an M.A. in English from Columbia University.

Contact

Telephone
(650) 723-0706

Research Interests