Biography
Kyle King is an associate professor of English and Communication Arts & Sciences, director of the Writing Commons, and coordinator of the Professional Writing minor at Penn State Altoona. He received his B.A. in English from Mercyhurst College in Erie, PA, in 2010, where he was also a DII Academic All-American on the men’s tennis team. He earned his Ph.D. in English at Penn State in 2017, specializing in rhetorical studies.
He teaches courses in rhetorical studies, writing studies, sports humanities, and 20th- and 21st-century literature. He primarily writes about the relationship between sports (athletes, organizations, and media) and movements for social change. He has twice won the National Communication Association Communication & Sport Division Top Paper Award for essays on the tennis essays of David Foster Wallace (2016) and the Billie Jean King “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match in public memory (2020). He is currently under contract (Bloomsbury), compiling and editing an encyclopedia of American sports media.
In his courses, he sets out to accomplish four goals:
- To provide students scaffolded, transferrable skills to help them in other courses;
- To develop professional skills that will help students’ job prospects;
- To challenge students to think of themselves as citizens of various civic and professional communities; and
- To model what it means to be a perennial student by teaching texts and assignments for the first time alongside his students.
Courses Taught
- ENGL 15: Rhetoric & Composition
- ENGL 30: Honors Rhetoric & Composition (Rhetoric of Education, Global/Transnational Rhetoric)
- ENGL 137H/138T: Rhetoric & Civic Life
- ENGL 183N: The Cold War in Literature, Politics, and History
- ENGL 211W: Introduction to Writing Studies
- ENGL 234: Sports, Ethics, Literature
- ENGL 250: Peer Tutoring in Writing
- ENGL 417: The Editorial Process
- ENGL 436: American Literature since 1945 (Cold War/Civil Rights, Literature of Artificial Intelligence)
- ENGL 471: Rhetorical Traditions (Social Movement Rhetoric, Higher Education Rhetoric)
- ENGL 487W: Senior Seminar (Genre Theory, Social Movement Rhetoric & Literature, Rhetoric & Literature of Higher Education)
Publications
Representative Publications
“Activism, Advocacy, and Social Justice Communication in Sport,” with Rebecca A. Alt and Jeffrey W. Kassing, in The Routledge Handbook of Sport Communication, 2nd ed. (2024): 382–392.
“Sport Spectacle, Billie Jean King, and the Battle of the Sexes in Public Memory,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 26.2 (2023): 97–124.
“Professional Tennis’s Constellational Response to COVID-19,” International Journal of Sports Communication 13.3 (2020): 344–351.
“The Spirituality of Sport and the Role of the Athlete in David Foster Wallace’s Tennis Essays,” Communication and Sport 6.2 (2018): 219–238.
“Three Waves of Gay Male Athlete Coming Out Narratives,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 103.4 (2017): 372–394.