From the Nichols Selection Committee Chair, Lisa Keränen:

Please join me in congratulating Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, this year’s recipients of the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Public Address:

The Public Image: Photography and Civic Spectatorship (2016, University of Chicago Press).

The book, which includes 48 arresting color plates, argues for a shift in how we understand photography and public life, revealing how it can “provide resources for democratic communication and thoughtful reflection about contemporary social problems.”

The Nichols Award Committee members, Kristan Poirot and J. David Cisneros, and I agreed with one of the book’s nominators that this volume is “beautifully produced, elegantly written, and intellectually important.” Another noted that “Just as Professor Nichols introduced the field of rhetorical studies to the work of Burke and Richards, effectively revolutionizing the study of public address, so also does The Public Image continue the important work of integrating new rhetorical conceptions of visual culture into contemporary public address studies.”

The Nichols Award recognizes individuals who have made significant scholarly contributions to the study of public address.

Marie Hochmuth Nichols was the 55th President of the Speech Association of America (now the National Communication Association) in 1969, editor of the Quarterly Journal of Speech from 1962 to 1965, and recipient of the Speech Communication Association’s Distinguished Service Award in 1976. Her scholarship concentrated on rhetorical theory, as she introduced the field to Kenneth Burke and I. A. Richards, and the criticism of public address. The criteria used in selecting the award recipient include (1) the importance of the work in extending or altering our understanding of public address and/or rhetorical practice; (2) originality; (3) quality of research; (4) intellectual creativity; and (5) quality of writing.

This year’s submissions are a testament to the bright future and social salience of public address scholarship.

We hope you will be able to join us at the 2017 Public Address Business Meeting in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday, November 18 at 2:00 – 3:15, in the Sheraton Dallas Ballroom D3 (on the first floor) to celebrate this and PAD’s other awards.

Congratulations, Drs. Hariman and Lucaites, and thank you for taking the work of rhetoric to broader publics.