Kent Alan Ono is an American academic, author, and educator. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah and was Chair of the department from 2012 to 2017. He was the President of the National Communication Association from 2020 to 2021.
Ono's research focuses on media representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation. His work in the area of rhetoric and communication theory has been focused in the areas of rhetoric, film and media studies, and ethnic and cultural studies. He has authored and edited seven books including Contemporary Media Culture and the Remnants of a Colonial Past (2009), Asian Americans and the Media (2009) and Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California's Proposition 187 (2002). He is most known for his research on critical rhetoric, vernacular discourse, Japanese American incarceration rhetoric, U.S. immigration rhetoric, Asian American rhetoric, neocolonial criticism and theory, independent film, and contemporary media studies.
He is the past editor of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies and past co-editor of Critical Studies in Media Communication. He also co-edited the book series, Critical Cultural Communication for New York University Press.
Early life and education
Ono was raised in Wyoming. He attended the University of Wyoming for three years, then transferred to DePauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana, where he completed a B.A. in English (Composition) in 1987. He went on to be a news reporter at the Redlands Daily Facts. Subsequently, he completed an M.A. in Communication at Miami University in 1988. In 1992, he completed his Ph.D. in Rhetorical Studies at the University of Iowa. His dissertation focused on Japanese American protest rhetoric during World War II.
Career
After completing his Ph.D., Ono joined the faculty of the Department of Rhetoric and Communication at the University of California, Davis, as an Assistant Professor, becoming an Associate Professor in 1998. At Davis, he co-founded and then was the inaugural director of the Cultural Studies Program (1999-2002) in addition to becoming a member of the American Studies and Asian American Studies programs.
In 2002, Ono left the University of California, Davis, to become the first permanent director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he was a Professor of Asian American Studies and also a Professor in the Media and Cinema Studies Department and the Institute of Communications Research. He was appointed the Director of the Asian American Studies Program in 2002 and served in this position until 2007. From 2005 to 2006, he was the Interim Director of the Center on Democracy in a Multicultural Society.
Ono left the University of Illinois in 2012 and joined the University of Utah as Professor of Communication, where he chaired the Communication Department from 2012 to 2017. From 2019 to 2022, he was a Research Fellow and an Adjunct Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Communication at Arizona State University. He served as President of the National Communication Association in 2020.
Ono was the co-Editor of Critical Studies in Media Communication, with Ronald L. Jackson II, from 2011 to 2013 and the Editor of Communication and Critical Cultural Studies from 2013 to 2014. From 2006 to 2014, he was the series co-Editor, with Sarah Banet-Weiser, of "Critical Cultural Communication."
Research
Much of Ono's research at the beginning of his career in the mid-1990s dealt with how race and culture are portrayed in the media and the topic of neocolonialism. He wrote a book chapter entitled "Domesticating Terrorism: A Neocolonial Economy of Différance" in 1996 about the rhetoric of neocolonialism in Pocahontas and Power Rangers. In 2000, he wrote "To Be a Vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Race and ('Other') Socially Marginalizing Positions on Horror TV" in the book Fantasy Girls.