Cara Finnegan

Cara Finnegan is a seasoned academic and book coach, currently serving as a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1999. Finnegan specializes in communication, rhetoric, and photography, with notable publications including "Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital" (2021) and "Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression" (2015). As a certified book coach, Finnegan focuses on guiding academics in writing fiction and memoir. Additional roles include Associate Head of the Department of Communication and Co-Host of the webcast "Chatting the Pictures" for Reading The Pictures. Finnegan's previous experience includes serving as a Research Fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Educational credentials include a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University, as well as master's and bachelor's degrees in Communication and Journalism from the University of St. Thomas and the University of Maine.