Claudia Janssen Danyi, PhD

My expertise lies in the areas of organizational rhetoric, public relations, crisis communication, and remembrance. My current research focuses on corporate ties to historical injustices within present discourses of reconciliation. I have, for instance, analyzed Volkswagen's present rhetoric about its past abuses of forced labor during WW II and Aetna Inc.'s rhetoric about its past business with slave insurance policies. I argue that corporations have responsibilities to account for their dark pasts and to contribute productively to societal discourses of "coming to terms" with historical injustices. I have further developed an ethical framework of corporate historical responsibility (CHR) that can guide an organization in the process of addressing a dark history after long periods of silence and forgetfulness.