Faculty Bio
return to Faculty List

Chris Lamb has emerged as an influential teacher and as a recognized scholar in such fields as editorial cartooning, political humor, and the press and the integration of baseball. He has appeared on The NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams, MSNBC, National Public Radio (NPR), Public Broadcasting System (PBS), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and The Sporting News radio network and has been interviewed by such newspapers, magazines and wire services as The Associated Press, Reuters, The National Journal, The Washington Journalism Review, Editor and Publisher, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Lamb teaches such courses as Writing for the Mass Media (Comm 230), Feature Writing (Comm 322), Opinion Writing (Comm 329), and Mass Media and Society (Comm 414). He also teaches special topics classes called Magazine Writing; Myth, Baseball and the Meaning of Life; and the Editorial Cartoon in America.

He is the author of four books, Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training, which was published in 2004 by the University of Nebraska Press. It was published in paperback in 2006. Blackout won the 2005 Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award for Best Florida Book in Minority and Ethnographic Studies. Dr. Lamb’s second book, Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons was published by Columbia University Press in 2004 and issued in paperback in 2006. His third book, Wry Harvest: An Anthology of Midwest Humor, was published in September 2006 by Indiana University Press. His fourth book, I’ll Be Sober: Great Comebacks, Putdowns and Ripostes, was published in 2007 by Frontline Press. He is finishing his fifth book, Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Campaign to Integrate Baseball, 1933-1945. It will be published in 2010.

Dr. Lamb’s research has been published in prominent academic journals, including Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism History, Newspaper Research Journal, Communication and the Law, and Telecommunication Policy. In addition, he has collaborated with three undergraduate students to present papers at national conferences. Two of those papers were later published in refereed journals.

During 2000, Dr. Lamb was the scholar in residence for a series of weekend seminars on the importance of humor in American society, which was sponsored by the Florida Humanities Council. In 2006, he traveled the state of Florida on a grant by the Florida Humanities Council discussing Jackie Robinson’s first spring training. In 2001, he organized a symposium on editorial cartoons and the 2000 Presidential Election on the C of C campus, which was shown on C-SPAN. In 2004, he gave a talk about editorial cartooning at the British Museum in London, England. In 2006, he contributed to a newspaper series that won Honorable Mention for Best Project Reporting in a contest sponsored by The Associated Press. In 2008, he served as a judge for the Herb Block Award for best editorial cartoonist of the year.

Before entering academia, he worked as a journalist for more than ten years. He continues to write for newspapers and magazines. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Miami Herald, Christian Science Monitor, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek.

Dr. Lamb is in his 12th at C of C. Before that, he taught at Old Dominion University. He received his Ph.D. in Mass Communications from Bowling Green State University in 1995, his master’s degree in Communications from the University of Tennessee in 1984, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee in 1980.