Marquis Who’s Who, a publisher of biographical profiles, has presented UW-Madison SJMC Professor Emeritus Stephen L. Vaughn with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. The Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award is given to individuals based on factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field. Vaughn celebrates many years’ experience in his professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes he has accrued in his field.
Professor Stephen Vaughn joined the University of Wisconsin faculty in 1981 after having taught three years at Indiana University and a year at the University of Oregon. Vaughn’s scholarship focused on such topics as propaganda, the uses of history, the relationship between the entertainment industries and American politics, censorship, and in recent years, the history and social influence of new media. He is the author of four books: Holding Fast the Inner Lines, The Vital Past, Ronald Reagan in Hollywood and Freedom and Entertainment. At the time Vaughn retired in 2017, he was completing The Age of New Media, 1975-1930, about the ways new technologies were received at the time of their invention. Vaughn’s scholarship strongly influenced his teaching. He mentored many graduate students and undergraduates during his 35 years at UW. He directed more than a dozen Ph.D. dissertations and some of his students now teach at such American institutions as UW-Madison, DePaul University, and Colorado State University, as well as schools abroad. He was the winner of two Fulbright Awards, one of which involved teaching in the former Soviet Union.