Awards

James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address

James A Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address
NCA Awards for Outstanding Scholarship

The Award and fund were established by students, colleagues, and admirers of those two distinguished Cornell University professors. The Annual Award is presented to scholarship that has been published by NCA members from April through March of the previous year. Works are nominated by NCA members only. 


Year Award Winner
2023 A. Freya Thimsen, The Democratic Ethos: Authenticity & Instrumentalism in US Movement Rhetoric after Occupy, published by the University of South Carolina Press in 2022
2022 Catalina M. de Onís, Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico, published by University of California Press in 2021.
2021 Lisa A. Flores, Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of the “Illegal” Immigrant, published by The Pennsylvania State University Press in 2020.
  Paul Stob, Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People, published by Michigan State University Press in 2020.
2020 Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, Homeland Maternity: U.S. Security Culture and the New Reproductive Regime, published by University of Illinois Press in 2019.
2019 Carly S. Woods, Debating Women: Gender, Education, and Spaces for Argument, 1835-1945, published by Michigan State University Press in 2018.
2018 Leslie A. Hahner, To Become an American: Immigrants and Americanization of Campaigns of the Early Twentieth Century (Michigan State University Press, 2017).
2017 Robin E. Jensen, Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term (Penn State University Press, 2016).
2016 Cara A. Finnegan, Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression (University of Illinois Press, 2015).
2015 Michael J. Lee, Creating Conservatism: Postwar Words that Made an American Movement (Michigan State University Press, 2014).
2014 Kristina Horn Sheeler & Karrin Vasby Anderson, Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture (Texas A&M University Press, 2013).
2013 Gerard A. Hauser, Prisoners of Conscience: Moral Vernaculars of Political Agency (University of South Carolina Press, 2012).
2012 Samuel McCormick, Letters to Power: Public Advocacy without Public Intellectuals (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011).
2011 Bradford Vivian, Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
2010 Robert Asen, Invoking the Invisible Hand: Social Security and the Privatization Debates (Michigan State University Press, 2009).
2009 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell & Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
2008 Robert Hariman & John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
2007 Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice (University of Alabama Press, 2006).
2006 Angela G. Ray, The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Michigan State University Press, 2005).
2005 John M. Sloop, Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in Contemporary U.S. Culture (University of Massachusetts Press, 2004).
2004 Susan Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women’s Political Identity (University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
2003 Kirt H. Wilson, The Reconstruction Desegregation Debate: The Politics of Equality and Rhetoric of Place, 1870-75 (Michigan State University Press, 2003).
2002 Stephen Hartnett, Democratic Dissent and the Cultural Fictions of Antebellum America (University of Illinois Press, 2002).
2001 Gordon Mitchell, Strategic Deception Rhetoric, Science, and Politics in Missile Defense Advocacy (Michigan State University Press, 2000).
2000 John Durham Peters, Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (University of Chicago Press, 1999).
1999 Xing Lu, Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E.: A Comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric (University of South Carolina Press, 1998).
1998 James Darsey, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America (New York University Press, 1997).
1997 Bonnie J. Dow, Prime-time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).
1996 Robert Hariman, Political Style: The Artistry of Power (University of Chicago Press, 1995).
1995 John Poulakos, Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece (University of South Carolina Press, 1995).
1994 Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (Yale University Press, 1993).
1993 Robert P. Newman, Owen Lattimore and the "Loss" of China (University of California Press, 1992).
1992 Lester C. Olson, Emblems of American Community in the Revolutionary Era: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).
1991 David Zarefsky, Lincoln, Douglas and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (University of Chicago Press, 1990).
1990 John Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making of “St. George” Orwell (Oxford University Press, 1989).
  Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her (Praeger, 1989).
1989 Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking (Oxford University Press, 1988).
1988 Roderick P. Hart
1987 Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value and Action (University of South Carolina Press, 1987).
1986 J. Michael Hogan, The Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy and the Evolution of Policy (Southern Illinois University Press, 1986).
  David Zarefsky, President Johnson’s War on Poverty: Rhetoric and History (University of Alabama Press, 1986).
1985 Thomas O. Sloane, Donne, Milton and the End of Humanist Rhetoric (University of California Press, 1985).
1984 Richard Gregg, Symbolic Inducement and Knowing: A Study in the Foundations of Rhetoric (University of South Carolina Press, 1984).
1983 Michael C. Leff, “Topical Invention and Metaphoric Interaction,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 47 (1983): 214-229.
  Robert Newman, “The Self-Inflicted Wound: The China White Paper of 1949,” Prologue 14 (1982):141-156.
1982 Franklyn Haiman, Speech and Law in a Free Society (University of Chicago Press, 1981).
1981 Paul Boase, Rhetoric of Protest and Reform (Ohio University Press, 1980).
1980 George Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (University of North Carolina Press, 1980).
1979 Don Burks, ed. Rhetoric, Philosophy and Literature: An Exploration (Purdue University Press, 1978).
1978 Kurt W. Ritter and James R. Andrews, The American Ideology: Reflections of the Revolution in American Rhetoric (Speech Communication Association, 1978).
1977 Ronald F. Reid, “New England Rhetoric and the French War, 1754-1760: A Case Study in the Rhetoric of War,” Communication Monographs 43 (1976): 259-286.
1976 Michael C. McGee, “In Search of ‘The People’: a Rhetorical Alternative,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 61 (1975): 235-249.
1975 James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from St. Augustine to the Renaissance (University of California Press, 1974).
  John H. Timmis, III, Thine is the Kingdom: The Trial for Treason of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, First Minister to King Charles I, and Last Hope of the English Crown (University of Alabama Press, 1974).
1974 Donald C. Bryant, Rhetorical Dimensions in Criticism (Louisiana State University Press, 1973).
1973 Frederick Haberman, Nobel Lectures – Peace: Including Presentation Speeches and Laureates’ Biographies, Volume 3 (Elsevier, 1972).
  George A. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 300 B.C. - A.D. 300 (Princeton University Press, 1972).
1972 Wilbur Howell, Eighteenth Century British Logic & Rhetoric (Princeton University Press, 1971).
1971 No award given
1970 Herbert Simons, “Requirements, Problems & Strategies: A Theory of Persuasion for Social Movements,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (1970): 1-11.
1969 Carroll Arnold, “Oral Rhetoric, Rhetoric and Literature,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 191-210.
  Loren Reid, Charles James Fox: A Man for the People (University of Missouri Press, 1969).
  Robert L. Scott and Donald K Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55 (1969): 1-8.
1968 Lloyd Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1-14.
  Karl Wallace, Francis Bacon on the Nature of Man (University of Illinois Press, 1967).
1967 Eugene White, “Master Holdsworth & ‘A Knowledge Very Useful & Necessary,’” Quarterly Journal of Speech 53 (1967): 1-16.
1966 Donald C. Bryant, “Edmund Burke: The New Images 1966,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 52 (1966): 329-336.