Public Address Division

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The Public Address Division takes as its mission the practice and the promotion of the study of a wide variety of rhetoric that addresses publics. Although the term "public address" evokes a rich history of the study of political and religious oratory, we welcome and include not only traditional studies of "great speakers and speeches," but also work that focuses on rhetorical acts and artifacts from various cultures, nations, and media. The Public Address Division is one of NCA’S oldest and largest divisions. Its members employ various analytical methods, including historical, descriptive, rhetorical, textual, and institutional critiques, as they examine the symbols that serve both to express and to shape public cultures. Scholarship in the division often leads to theoretical insight about the nature of public discourse at the same time as it enhances our understanding of particular discourses, rhetors, or social movements. Despite the variety of critical perspectives, members of the division share a concern for the relationship between "text" and "context," the object of study and its scene.

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Public Address Division Award Announcement

Sara Hayden, Vice Chair

It is my pleasure to announce the Public Address Division’s Benson-Campbell Dissertation Research Award recipients. This year, the committee chose to honor two scholars: Corinne Sugino for her dissertation, Familiar Foreigners: Multicultural Rhetorics of Asian American Racialization (University of Pittsburgh, Department of Communication), and  Natonya Listach for her dissertation, "Lifting as We Climb": A Rhetorical Analysis of the Speeches of Hallie Quinn Brown (University of Memphis, Department of Communication. Congratulations to you both and thank you to the committee members for your service! 

It is my pleasure to announce the Public Address Division’s annual awards. Although there were many excellent convention submissions, three papers received particularly high scores from reviewers. The recipients of the Wrage-Baskerville Top Paper Award are Luke Winslow and Rebecca Lanier, both of Baylor University, for their essay “Thinning the Heard: COVID-19, Immunity, and the Rhetoric of Trumpian Catastrophe.” The recipient of the Robert Gunderson Top Student Paper Award is Joshua Smith of Kansas University for his essay, “Transforming Land, or, what Bears Ears National Monument Teaches Us about Rhetoric and Colonialism.” The third Top Paper Award goes to Elizabeth Gardner and Rebeca Garcia Hernandes for their paper, “Child Workers Asserting a Bolivian Childhood in the Debate of the Código Niña, Niño y Adolescente.” In addition to awarding the top papers submitted to our annual convention, each year, the Public Address Division distributes the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award honoring Outstanding Published Scholarship in Public Address. This year, the committee chose to honor Lisa Flores for her monograph Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of the “Illegal” Immigrant. In addition, the committee congratulates Lisa M. Corrigan for her book Black Feelings: Race and Affect in the Long Sixties and Allison L. Rowland for her monograph Zoetropes and the Politics of Humanhood, both of which were named as Honorable Mentions. Thanks much to the reviewers and committee members for their hard work and congratulations to all of the award recipients!

Leadership

  • Chair: Sara Hayden
  • Vice Chair: Abraham Khan
  • Vice Chair-Elect: Atilla Hallsby
  • Immediate Past Chair: Belinda Stillion Southard
  • Secretary: Katie Bruner
Legislative Assembly
  • Belinda Stillion Southard
  • Sara Hayden
  • Abraham Khan

PAD Membership 

Official count taken each January.

108th Annual Convention -- New Orleans, LA -- Nov. 17 - 20, 2022

Convention Calls
  • PAD Call -- Deadline: Thu, 3/31 2022 3:00 AM EDT
Business Meeting Minutes
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Interest Group Election