Faculty Members
William McKeen , Ph.D.
Professor and Chair - Department of Journalism
Ph.D.,
Higher Education Administration, “Field Day: Student Dissent in the Aftermath of the Kent State Shootings,” University of Oklahoma, 1986
M.A.,
Journalism, “Heroes and Villians: Journalists in American Popular Culture, 1915-1975,” Indiana University, 1977
B.A.,
History, Indiana University, 1974
Office: 2070 Weimer
Phone: (352) 392-0500
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Home page
Research area
Role of the press in the civil rights movement, popular culture, media empires, image of journalists in fiction and film, journalism as literature.
Biography
McKeen is the author of six books and editor of four more. His latest book, Outlaw Journalist, is a biography of the late writer, Hunter S. Thompson. Highway 61 is a memoir of a 6,000-mile road trip with his college-age son. He is working on an anthology about childhood in Florida. Rock and Roll is Here to Stay, a mammoth music history, appeared in 2000 and was featured at the 2001 Grammy Awards. The same year he published another collection, Literary Journalism: A Reader. McKeen has written four other books, critical biographies of Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Bob Dylan and the Beatles. His first book project was The American Story, for which he served as assistant editor to Starkey Flythe Jr. McKeen specializes in media history, popular culture and literary journalism. He has written for Gourmet, Maxim, American History, Holiday, The Saturday Evening Post, The World Book Encyclopedia, and many other newspapers, magazines and books. He was among the music writers asked to contribute to Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin, a lavish coffee table book published in 2008. He has been copy editor and reporter at several newspapers, and was staff editor at The Saturday Evening Post and production editor for The American Spectator. earned his B.A. in history and his M.A. in journalism from Indiana University and his Ph.D. in education from the University of Oklahoma. He is married, has seven children and lives on a small farm near Wacahoota, Florida.
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