Ned Vankevich, PhD

Associate Professor of Media + Communication
I take higher education to be a whole-person journey where mind, body, and soul get challenged through the process of engaged critical thinking, debate, and dialogue. My intent is to prepare our students for a marvelous, mysterious, and malefic world that awaits them beyond the gates of TWU.

Professor Ned Vankevich is a dual US/Canadian who has been teaching at Trinity Western University for over 20 years. Previous to this he taught university courses in LA, Boston, and Virginia and worked in the film, television, and documentary business as a producer, writer, director.

His film work has enabled him to travel to 48 countries and explore exotic and enlightening cultures.

He has been married to his wife Judi for over 30 years and three children are successfully using their talents to help better the world.

  • PhD (Regent University)
  • MA (Old Dominion University)
  • MA (Regent University)
  • BA (McGill University)

Expertise

Rhetorical Criticism, Film Criticism, Media and cultural criticism List research topics, key phrases, Film Production

  • Ned Vankevich. “The Death of Christendom and The Resurrection of the Mythic Hero.” Langley, BC: Inklings Institute of Canada.
  • Ned Vankevich “Sculpting Scenarios: A Personal Journey of Creative Research in the Production of a Feature Film or Alchemy and the Artist.”  Langley, BC: Trinity Western University.
  • Ned Vankevich Academise: How the Academy Has Lost Its Soul Plenum Session Paper Presented
  • at Trinity Western Faculty Retreat
  • Ned Vankevich Panel Moderator for an after-screening discussion of the documentary film “With God on Our Side” sponsored by the Trinity Western University School of Art, Media, and Culture.
  • Ned Vankevich led a post-critique and discussion of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami'’s The Wind Will Carry Us at the annual Trinity Western University Faculty Retreat.
  • Ned Vankevich Unsettling Comfortable Pities: Can There be Political and Moral Prudence in an Age of Rabid Relativism? Paper presented at the annual Trinity Western Faculty Retreat.
  • Ned Vankevich Theo-Epistemic Cinema: Transontological Cinematics in the Films  of Andrei Tarkovsky and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Paper presented at the SAMC Arts and Genesis Conference.
  • Ned Vankevich Using Media In the Classroom to Increase Critical and Compassion Literacy. Workshop presentation conducted for high school teachers at the BC Christian School Teachers’ Convention.
  • Ned Vankevich  Of One-Eyed Monsters and Vice-Gripped Gods: What We Can Learn from Greeks paper presented at the Trinity Western University International Studies Faculty-Student Forum.
  • Ned Vankevich Moderator for Post-Screening Panel Discussion of the film “With God on Our Side” Trinity Western University.
  • Ned Vankevich How to “Read” a Film workshop presentation  for ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International) British Columbia Conference.
  • Ned Vankevich The Agon of Interpretation: Unconditional Love, Authorial Optimism and the Sites of Dunamis and Charis in "The Princess And The Warrior.” Paper presented at the National Communication Association, Miami Beach, FL, to the Visual Communication and Spiritual Communication Commissions.
  • Ned Vankevich Through a Cave Darkly: Virtual Reality, Neurobiology, and Postmodern Theology in “The Matrix.” Paper presented at the National Communication Association, Miami Beach, FL, to the Religious Communication Association.
  • Ned Vankevich Organized and chaired a panel entitled Evil in the Agora: Public Reaction Following the Events of September 11th A Roundtable Discussion for the American Studies Commission of the National Communication Association, New Orleans, LA.
  • Ned Vankevich Situating the Uncomfortable: Postmodernity and the Problem of Evil.  Paper presented at the National Communication Association, New Orleans, LA, to the American Studies Commission. 
  • Ned Vankevich The Healing Dimensions of Communication: A Roundtable Discussion.  Panel member at the National Communication Association, New Orleans, LA, sponsored by the Applied Communication Division.
  • Ned Vankevich (2001). Radicalizing Medicine: Theory and Therapeutic Implications of Bio-Rhetoric and Placebo Effect.  Paper presented at the National Communication Association, Atlanta, GA, to the Intrapersonal Communication/Social Cognition Commission.
  • Ned Vankevich (2001) Organized and chaired a panel entitled Radicalizing the Symbolic: Bio-Communication and the Roots of Mind/Brain Interaction for the Intrapersonal Communication/Social Cognition Commission of the National Communication Association, Atlanta, Georgia.
  • Ned Vankevich (2000).  Socrates and Plato Contra Sophistry and Rhetoric: Philosophical Dialectic and the Delimiting of Epistemological Freedom.  Paper presented at the National Communication Association, Seattle, to the American Society for the History of Rhetoric.
  • Panelist at the National Communication Association (2000), Seattle, Engaged Discipline Series: Evaluating Approaches Holistic/Alternative/Integrative (HAI) Medicine—A Roundtable Discussion.
  • Ned Vankevich Charting the End of Civilization as We Know It: The Abyssal Rhetoric of Gary North's Y2K Secular Eschatology.  Paper presented at the National Communication Association, Chicago, for a panel I put together entitled Kaleidoscopic Chaos: The Rhetoric of Y2K, Millennial, Apocalyptic and End Time Discourse.
  • Ned Vankevich Foundations Like Flowing Water: The Influence of Ancient Rhetoric on Nietzsche’s Perspectival and Anti-Metaphysical Turn.  Paper presented to the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division at the National Communication Association, Chicago.
  • Ned Vankevich Dr. Stephen Barrett’s Hegemonic Internet Crusade Against Alternative Medicine.  Paper Presented to the British Society for the Social History of Medicine, University of South Hampton, England
  • Ned Vankevich Respondent to Kenneth Chase’s Paper “Christian Discourse in a Nietzschean Age: Mapping A Theological Location for Persuasion.” presented for the Religious Speech and Communication Association at the National Communication Association, New York City.
  • Ned Vankevich The Rhetoric of Triteness: Time, Narrative and Normality in American Adolescent Autograph Albums.  Judged one of the Top Three Student Papers for 1997 presented at the National Communication Association, Chicago, Illinois.
  • Ned Vankevich Contradiction as Coherency: Nietzsche’s Rhizomorphic Rhetoric.  Paper presented at the National Communication Association, Chicago, Illinois. 
  • Ned Vankevich  (1997).  Sacred World, Post-Mythic Culture: Nietzsche’s Perspectival Agon and the Onto-Rhetoric of the Christian Right.  Paper presented at the Religious Speech Communication Association at the National Communication Association Chicago, Illinois.
  • Ned Vankevich Dwelling in the Twilight of the Holy: The Rhetorico-Spiritual Feminism of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim.  Paper presented at a Works in Progress Conference of Feminist Scholarship in Hampton Roads, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia.
  • Ned Vankevich.  The Illusion Travels by Desire: Using Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Read Lacan.  Paper presented at the Society for Cinema Studies conference, Dallas, Texas.
  • Ned Vankevich Image and Being: A Lacanian Ethnographic Analysis of Elvis Impersonators and their Fans.  Paper presented at the Popular Culture Association, Las Vegas, Nevada.
  • Ned Vankevich and Ben Fraser Islands of Modernity: An Ethnographic Analysis of Elvis Impersonators as Poacher.  Paper presented at the International Communication Association, Chicago. 
  • Ned Vankevich. The Mythos of Speaking: Plato, Derrida and the Folktale as Philosophy.  Paper presented at the Old Dominion English Graduate Student Association Conference, Norfolk, Virginia.
  • Ned Vankevich. Embracement, Nurturance and Care: Feminist Rationality and the Quest for a Political Ethic of Violence.  Paper presented at Works in Progress: A Conference of Feminist Scholarship in Hampton Roads, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia.
  • Ned Vankevich. Philosophy as Text in Rhetorical Thought: A Close-Reading of Derrida’s “White Mythology.”  Paper presented at the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division of the Speech Communication Association, San Diego.
  • Ned Vankevich Paradoxes of the Soul: A Close Reading of the Sacred Harp  Paper presented at the Religious Speech Communication Association Division of the Speech Communication Association at the Speech Communication Association, San Diego.
  • GRANTS
  • $25,000 Grant from the Blauuw family to document their forest and its gift to Trinity Western University. Spring 2019.
  • $40,000 from the Bennett Memorial Foundation for archiving and preserving a global film footage collection.  Spring 2007.
  • $800 TWU Internal Grant Competition to research and write a paper on the agon of foundational values within the clash between Western Civilization and radicalize Islmaicism. 
  • $1,900 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to research and present a paper on "Bio-Rhetoric: How Persuasion Affects Health.
  • $1500 Trinity Western University Faculty Research Grant for experimental film project. 

Awards & Honors

  • First Place, The People’s Pilot Competition for a dystopian, sci-fi TV series screenplay VENOM. 2019. https://tvwriter.com/the-peoples-pilot-winners/
  • The Rhetoric of Triteness: Time, Narrative and Normality in American Adolescent Autograph Albums.  Judged one of the Top Three Student Papers for 1997 presented at the National Communication Association, Chicago, Illinois. 
  • Shakespeare Gold Medal for Top Graduate in English Program McGill

Recent Publications

  • Introduction to Digital Filmmaking: A Beginner’s Guide to Mastering the Craft. Epub. 2019.
  • “A Case Study of Bio-Spirituality: Placebo and the Physiological Effects of Spiritual and Emotional Beliefs.” Chapter published in Communicating Spirituality in Health Care. Wills, Margaret A., ed.  Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press Communication Series, 2009.
  • “Confronting the Uncomfortable: Postmodernity and the Quandary of Evil.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs. Vol. 6, Fall 2003. 
  • “Limiting Pluralism: Medical Scientism, Quackery, and the Internet.”  Chapter published in Plural Medicine: 19th and 20th Century Perspectives. Waltraud Ernst, ed. Routledge Press, UK, 2002. 
  • Y2K Made Simple: A Natural Health Resource Guide.  Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 1999. 

Affiliations & Memberships

  • American Popular Culture Association
  • Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University
  • National Communication Association
  • National Storytelling Association
  • Rhetoric Society of America
  • Society for Cinema Studies
  • Women in Film

  • COMM 211 / MCOM 281 Public Speaking
  • COMM 220 / MCOM 221 Digital Filmmaking I
  • COMM 260 / MCOM 211 Intro to Film Studies
  • COMM 311 Film Post-Production
  • COMM 320/450 DRAM 303 / MCOM 361 / THTR 320 Screenwriting
  • COMM 330 / MCOM 321 Digital Filmmaking II
  • COMM 335/336 / MCOM 315 Film History
  • COMM 431 / MCOM 412 Masters of Cinema
  • COMM 440 / MCOM 422 Film Directing