REAGAN EXPERT SPEAKS AT SOUTHEAST TUESDAY

Dr. Kurt Ritter, a professor at Texas A&M and a leader in the field of political communication, will discuss Ronald Reagan in a lecture Tuesday.

The lecture will be given at 8 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom at the Southeast Missouri State University.

"Dr. Ritter is one of the foremost political campaign scholars around," said Dr. Thomas Harte, chair of Southeast's Department of Speech Communication and Theatre. "He is definitely an expert on Reagan as communicator."

Ritter's talk, which will feature slides and videotape, will deal with Reagan's use of communication as a political tool and analyze the former president's approach to rhetoric.

Harte said Ritter also will bring transparencies of some of Reagan's original drafts of speeches, allowing the audience to see not just the final speech but the process Reagan used to write his speeches.

Ritter is the author of "Ronald Reagan: The Great Communicator," the book on which his lecture will be based. He also produced the first scholarly monograph on Reagan's 1980 presidential debates. He has published and lectured extensively both on Reagan and on political communication, as well as on television as a medium for political debate.

Ritter is currently working on another book about Reagan and a bibliography of works about Reagan.

Ritter's speech will be the first annual Emil E. Weis Lecture. The Rev. Professor Weis was an instructor at Southeast. The Weis lecture series was established by a donation to the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre from the Weis family.