From PAD Vice-Chair Lisa Flores:

I’m delighted to announce our Top Paper Award recipients.

Robert Gunderson Top Student Paper Award
Daniel DeVinney, University of Illinois, for his essay, “Obama’s Constructed Audiences: A Constitutive Analysis of the 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address and the 2008 Obama Coalition.”

Wrage-Baskerville Top Paper Award
Emily Kofoed, University of South Carolina-Upstate, for her essay, “Crafting Rhetorical Precedent: Citizenship Controversy in the Matter of Toboso—Alfonso.”

We will recognize both Emily and Daniel at our business meeting. Each will receive a plaque and a modest check. I hope many of you will be able to attend the business meeting and celebrate our fine work.

The Public Address Division (PAD) of the National Communication Association invites submissions for the 103rd Annual Convention to be held in Dallas, TX, November 16-19, 2017.

PAD supports research into multiple forms of political and cultural rhetoric, including verbal, visual, performative, or blended texts, occurring in U.S., international, or transnational contexts, generated by or for minority or majority individuals and groups, and responsive to historical or contemporary concerns. PAD welcomes work on topics and using methods that cross or bridge disciplinary boundaries (e.g. memory, post-colonialism, religion, gender, sexuality). Submitters are not required to be members of PAD. See the PAD web site for more information about the division: ncapad.com.

We invite submissions of (1) individual papers (also known as “completed papers”), (2) paper sessions, and (3) panel discussions. An individual should submit no more than one paper to PAD. Papers must not have been presented at another convention, nor can the same submission be made to more than one division at this convention.

The 2017 NCA convention theme is “Our Legacy, Our Relevance,” which points to the ways our disciplinary work impacts not only the discipline but also the communities we engage and the world we inhabit. Asking NCA members to reflect backward into our histories and forward down our new paths, the 2017 convention theme centers the everyday relevance of our scholarly and pedagogical projects and gives particular attention to existing legacies—intellectual, institutional, and cultural—to honor and new ones to cultivate. In addition, the convention theme encourages papers and panels that address the relevance of our research, teaching, and service. With attention to the notion of “standing in the gap,” this year’s NCA program planner encourages submissions that prioritize advocacy for and connection to everyday communities.

All submissions must be made through NCA Convention Central. NCA Convention Central will open for 2017 conference submissions on January 16, 2017. Submissions MUST be uploaded to the site by 11:59 pm, Pacific Time, on March 29, 2017. Please begin the submission process well in advance. Submitters who need assistance with the process can access how-to guides, sample submissions, webinars, and other useful resources from the NCA Convention Resource Library web site at www.natcom.org/conventionresources.

TYPES OF SUBMISSIONS AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

I.  Individual Papers: Individual papers are completed, unpublished research papers. The Vice Chair will organize accepted individual papers into thematic panels and assign a chair and respondent.

Submission Guidelines (all submissions):

1. Please complete the required electronic submission fields including title, description, author(s), and keywords.
2. Include a title and a 250-300 word abstractwith the paper upload.
3. Recall that the maximum length for submitted papers is 25 double-spaced pages, excluding notes and illustrations.
4. To ensure anonymous review,upload a copy of your paper that has all identifying information removed. To remove identifying data, make sure you:
5. Remove author(s) identifying information such as the title page or personal references.
6. Remove author(s) identifying information from the title of the document.
7. Remove author(s) identifying information from the document properties.
8. Re-save the file and confirm that the document properties have been updated to remove any author(s) information before uploading.
9. Before finalizing your submission, preview your submission to make sure all information is correct.
10. All submitters of papers to PAD are encouraged to consider marking the Scholar-to-Scholar option if their work can be effectively presented in a poster format. Some papers that we otherwise would not have room to place in a session slot will be accepted if this box is checked on the electronic submission form.
11. All AV requests must be made at the time of submission.

Students: please indicate on the submission form that your submission is a student paper so that it can be considered for the division’s Robert Gunderson Award for Top Student Paper in Public Address.

Awards: The Public Address Division offers two awards for top submitted papers. In addition to the Gunderson Award for Top Student Paper, the Wrage-Baskerville Award honors the Top Paper in Public Address. Awards are presented at the Division’s business meeting at the convention, and top papers are presented in a special session immediately following the business meeting.

II.  Paper Sessions: A paper session involves a group of presenters with titled papers centering on a common theme. Paper sessions that include participants of varied career stages across different universities and geographical regions and those that include diversity of gender, race/ethnicity, and other identity positions are strongly encouraged. Proposals must include:

1. A title and description for the session of no more than 75 words;
2. The names of a chair and a respondent;
3. Titles, descriptions, and author information for each paper.
4. A rationale. This statement should provide an overall justification for the significance of the paper session.
5. If the session is a good candidate for co-sponsorship with another division, caucus, or affiliate organization, please identify the potential co-sponsor on the special requests tab.
6. All AV requests must be made at the time of submission.

III. Panel Discussions: A panel discussion involves a group of panelists discussing a specific topic. Panelists in a discussion session do not title their individual presentations or present papers. Interactive panel sessions that include participants of varied career stages across different universities and geographical regions and those that include diversity of gender, race/ethnicity, and other identity positions are strongly encouraged.

Proposals must include:

1. A title and description for the panel of no more than 75 words;
2. A chair and all presenters;
3. A rationale. This statement should provide an overall justification for the significance of the panel discussion.
4. If the panel is a good candidate for co-sponsorship with another division, caucus, or affiliate organization, please identify the potential co-sponsor on the special requests tab.
5. All AV requests must be made at the time of submission.

EVALUATIVE STANDARDS

In preparing your submission, please consider these criteria, which will guide the review process:

• Relevance to the Public Address Division. How relevant is the submission to the aims and goals articulated in the conference call and expressed in the “About PAD” statement on the division’s web site at https://ncapad.com/about/.
• Quality of scholarship. Will the submission make an important contribution to knowledge in public address? This criterion involves engagement with appropriate primary and secondary source material; originality and significance of argument; and coherence, rigor, and soundness of argument.
• Quality of writing and/or coherence of session design. How well is the submission presented? This criterion focuses on clarity of expression, developmental flow, and stylistic artistry, and, for paper sessions and panel discussions, the conception and articulation of the session plan.

SUBMITTING PAPERS TO RESPONDENTS

Completed papers that are accepted for presentation at the convention and then uploaded by the submitter will be available to respondents via NCA Convention Central prior to the convention.

Please feel free to send questions to the Public Address Division’s Vice Chair for 2017: Lisa A. Flores, lisa.flores@colorado.edu.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!

As prepared by Jen Mercieca, PAD Chair:

PAD Slideshow, NCA 2016

PAD Vice Chair Jen Mercieca has planned a great set of programs for the Public Address Division. She’s also prepared a handy guide to those programs. Philadelphia or bust–be sure to support your Public Address programs!

pad-2016-convention-program

Friday, November 11, 2016 at 12:30 pm, Marriott Grand Salon I, Level 5

Agenda
2016 Public Address Division Business Meeting National Communication Association Annual Convention Philadelphia, PA | November 11, 2016 | Marriott Grand Salon I | Level 5

Presiding Officer: Lisa Keränen, PAD Chair
Minutes by Maegan Parker Brooks, PAD Secretary

I. Call to Order
II. Approval of the Agenda
III. Approval of the 2015 PAD Meeting Minutes
IV. Report from the PAD Nominating Committee, Jeffrey Bennett, Committee Chair Distribution and Collection of Ballots. The slate of candidates was also made available online prior to the business meeting, at http://www.ncapad.com.
V. Report from PAD Chair, Lisa Keränen
VI. NCA Legislative Assembly Report, Lisa Keränen
VII. Report from PAD Vice-Chair, Jennifer Mercieca
A. Presentation of Robert Gunderson Award to Lauren Harris, University of Maryland.
B. Presentation of Wrage-Baskerville Award to Kelly Jakes, Wayne State University.
VIII. Presentation of Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award by Leah Ceccarelli, Immediate Past Chair. The award recipient is Robert E Terrill, Indiana University, for Double Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship (University of South Carolina Press, 2015).
IX. Presentation of Benson-Campbell Dissertation Research Award by Belinda A. Stillion Southard to Katie Irwin, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
X. NCA Governance Reports
A. NCA Nominating Committee, Kelly Jakes
B. Other NCA Governance Matters
XI. Report from the Vice Chair-Elect, Lisa Flores
XII. Announcements
A. Public Address Conference and Looking Forward to Boulder
B. Announcements from the Floor
XIII. New Business (by motion, as time permits)
XIV. Report of PAD Election Results, Jeffrey Bennett, Committee Chair
XV. Adjournment

Congratulations to Katie Irwin from the University of Illinois. She is the recipient of the 2016 Benson-Campbell Dissertation Research Award from the NCA Public Address Division.

Ms. Irwin received the award in support of her dissertation project entitled “‘Freeing Our Latent Power: Rural Woman and Emergent Rhetorical Agency, 1920-1929.”

From PAD Immediate Past-Chair Leah Ceccarelli:

Please join me in congratulating this year’s recipient of the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award, for outstanding published scholarship in public address. Robert E. Terrill will be honored at our annual business meeting for his book, Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship (University of South Carolina Press, 2015).

There were so many high quality books in the pool of nominees that one can’t help but feel great optimism for the future of the field. My fellow Nichols Award Committee members, Belinda Stillion Southard and James Darsey, join me in praising Terrill’s book as a nuanced, timely, rhetorically-rich study, one that especially impressed us with its discipline, precision, subtlety, and value.

Please come to the business meeting of the Public Address Division at the NCA Convention, on November 11, from 12:30-1:45p, in Marriott Grand Salon I, Level 5, to see Dr. Terrill and the other division award winners receive their plaques.

The PAD Nominating Committee announces the following slate for the 2016 PAD elections. Please attend the PAD business meeting, Friday, 11/11 at 12:30 pm in Grand Salon I-Level 5.

Two nominees for Vice Chair-Elect:

• Kristy Maddux (University of Maryland)
• Paul Stob (Vanderbilt University)

Two nominees for the Winans-Wichelns award committee:

• Davis Houck (Florida State University)
• Michael Lee (College of Charleston)

Four nominees for the Nichols Award committee:

• Jason Edward Black (University of North Carolina at Charlotte)
• Jenell Johnson (University of Wisconsin)
• Kristan Poirot (Texas A&M University)
• David Cisneros (University of Illinois)

Two nominees for the Benson/Campbell Dissertation Award Committee:

• Kristen McCauliff (Ball State University)
• Michael Butterworth (Ohio University)

Two nominees for the NCA nominating committee:

• Allison Prasch (Colorado State University)
• Tim Steffensmeier (Kansas State University)

Ten nominees for the PAD nominating committee:

• Mark Hlavacik (University of North Texas)
• Paul Johnson (University of Pittsburgh)
• Zornitsa Keremidchieva (Macalester College)
• Jennifer Keohane (George Mason University)
• Monika Alston-Miller (University of Central Arkansas)
• Sam Perry (Baylor University)
• M. Elizabeth Thorpe (SUNY-Brockport)
• Mary Anne Trasciatti (Hofstra University)
• Sarah Stone Watt (Pepperdine University)
• Emily Winderman (North Carolina State University)

From Jen Mercieca–PAD Vice Chair:

Howdy! I write with an update about the 2016 NCA Convention Program, which is live today on natcom.org. Conference registration and hotel room blocks are also open today, get the good rates while they last!

Program

Thanks to y’all who submitted work for consideration for PAD at NCA this year. We were allotted 22 slots this year, two fewer than last year. I regretted that the submissions were so strong overall that many deserving papers and panels were declined. Overall, I was able to accept 36 of 89 papers  for  about 40% acceptance (the same as last year). In addition, I was able to program 18 of 27 panel submissions. Thank you also to those of you who volunteered to review submissions!

Business Meeting

Regardless of whether your submission was accepted or not, all members of PAD are cordially invited to the PAD Business Meeting this coming November, where we will elect new officers, conduct old and new business, and celebrate our award winners. The PAD Business Meeting is scheduled for 12:30-1:45 in Grand Salon I – Level 5 (Marriott).

Top Papers Panel

Immediately after the business meeting, we will move on to our top papers panel, featuring:

Kelly Jakes, Wayne State University, “Songs of Sovereignty: Folksinging and Hegemonic Masculinity in Liberation France.”

The experiences of defeat and occupation by Germany and liberation by the Allies wrought considerable gender damage upon France during the Second World War. In this essay, I examine appropriations of “Quand Madelon,” a popular WWI song that reemerged during the early weeks of France’s liberation, arguing that these songs offered one discursive resource by which patriots reasserted the manly strength of their nation. By reviving old archetypal notions of eroticized, subservient femininity and tough, virile masculinity, the tunes exerted discipline over “wayward” French women and eased gendered anxieties about the nation’s ability to reclaim its status as a sovereign nation. However, like all instruments of hegemony, the songs were not purely repressive. Indeed, by aligning French résistantes with Madelon, – a symbol of paradigmatic femininity and also female civic participation and sexual agency – the songs elicited support from French women even as they contributed to misogynistic representations of war and victory.

Kevin A. Johnson and Stefani Wlaschin, California State University, Long Beach, “Vita Contemplativactiva: President Obama, Chronopolitics, and the Liberal Arts.”

Our purpose in this essay is to specifically offer a critique of the chronopolitical dimension in the current political debate about liberal arts education. Paul Virilio advanced a theory of chronopolitics that linked power to the ability to control technologies of time. In focusing on the chronopolitical dimension of education rhetoric, we advance a theory of the vita contemplativactiva. As a chronopolitical orientation, the vita contemplativactiva emphasizes a rhetorical education whereby there is no activa without contemplativa and no contemplativa without activa. Specifically, in analyzing President Obama’s address regarding manufacturing jobs, combined with the ensuing controversy surrounding art history education, we argue that the vita contemplativactiva is a necessary critical tool to ensure that the vita activa and vita contemplativa are not rhetorically constructed to be at odds with each other, to the detriment of both. In short, we argue for solidarity between the vita activa and vita contemplativa rooted in a rhetorical education. Such solidarity is necessary to navigate the demands of both democratic and economic life.

Courtney Caudle Travers, Vanderbilt University, “Fashion’s “Civic Callings:” The Rhetorical First Lady, Postwar National Identity, and Michelle Obama.”

While many scholars have examined the so-called “post-racial” politics of Barack Obama’s administration and media coverage thereof, relatively few scholars have investigated Michelle Obama’s influence on the position of first lady. Put differently, the nation’s first African-American first lady has a specific set of institutional constraints alongside broader cultural constructions of gender and race. While all first ladies face the rhetorical constraint of fashion as a potent gendered symbol for their “fit” as models for American womanhood, Michelle Obama has the additional challenge of diminishing the many media stereotypes inscribed on black women’s bodies. Thus, in this essay, I illuminate the constitutive and instrumental elements of fashion as a rhetorical resource for first ladies. I first contextualize how American fashion design gained political and symbolic momentum in the post-WWII era, before narrowing to a brief rhetorical history of modern first ladies whose fashion choices have been noted by media. Then, I use close visual and media analysis to demonstrate how First Lady Michelle Obama has addressed specific rhetorical problems through deploying fashion at relevant moments in the Obama presidency: inauguration 2009, and the 2011 and 2015 State Dinners for China. Ultimately, I conclude that analysis of Obama’s rhetorical use of fashion provides scholars the ability to complicate “post” discourses about femininity, fashion, and first ladies by better illuminating the institutional relationship between norms and invention.

Lauren R. Harris, University of Maryland, “More Beef, Less Bull: The Intersection of Agrarian and Expediency Ideologies in Recent Congressional Campaigns.”

Through an analysis of recent advertisements for congressional hopefuls Kristi Noem and Joni Ernst, this paper examines how each female candidate was able to draw on traditional imagery of agrarianism and expediency to construct an electable persona. The intersection of the agrarian myth and expediency arguments allow both women to construct a persona of the ideal moral citizen.

Award Winners

I’m thrilled to announce that this year’s recipients of the Public Address Division Top Paper Awards are:

Robert Gunderson Top Student Paper Award

First, congratulations to Lauren R. Harris, University of Maryland, for submitting the top-ranked student paper to PAD this year.

Wrage-Baskerville Top Paper Award

Second, join me in congratulating Kelly Jakes, Wayne State University, for submitting the division’s overall top-ranked contributed paper.

Each author will receive an award plaque and a modest award check at the PAD’s annual Business Meeting. I hope to see many PAD members there!

Program Highlights

I’d also like to highlight two panels related to the 2016 Presidential Election, which have been scheduled back to back on Saturday:

11:00 AM – 12:15 PM           Spotlight Panel 2016 Election: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Presidential Campaign Rhetoric

Room 413 – Level 4             Marriott Downtown

• Karrin Anderson, Colorado State University
• Bonnie J. Dow, Vanderbilt University
• Stephanie Martin, Southern Methodist University
• Carrie Murawski, Texas A&M University
• John M. Murphy, University of Illinois
• Shawn J. Parry-Giles, University of Maryland

12:30 PM – 1:45 PM Spotlight Panel 2016 Election: Trump’s Insurgency: Demagoguery, Perversion, and Identity

Room 413 – Level 4             Marriott Downtown

• Taylor Hahn, Johns Hopkins University
• James Darsey, Georgia State University
• Paul Elliott Johnson, University of Pittsburgh
• Patricia Roberts-Miller, University of Texas
• Joshua Gunn, University of Texas, Austin
• Jennifer Mercieca, Texas A&M University

In the coming months, I will use this list and our Facebook page to spotlight some of our other upcoming convention programming. General information about the division can be found at: http://ncapad.com. Thanks, as ever, to web spinner Trevor Parry-Giles for keeping our website current.

Yay, #teamrhetoric!

I hope that this finds you well,

Jen

Call for Nominations

Benson-Campbell Dissertation Research Award, 2016

The Public Address Division of NCA solicits nominations for the Benson-Campbell Dissertation Research Award, which honors the scholarly contributions of Thomas Benson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell by recognizing outstanding promise in doctoral research in Rhetoric and Public Address. A $500 award will be presented at the business meeting of the Public Address Division in Philadelphia, PA.

Competition for the Benson-Campbell Award is open to graduate-student members of the Public Address Division who have successfully defended a Ph.D. dissertation prospectus. A completed nomination packet consists of (1) a 7-10 page summary of the dissertation prospectus, (2) a statement by the nominee about the progress of the dissertation to date, and (3) a letter of support from the nominee’s dissertation advisor that certifies that the nominee has successfully defended the prospectus and provides a rationale for why the nominee should receive the award. Complete nomination packets must be received electronically by Belinda Stillion Southard at bss@uga.edu by August 1, 2016 in order for the nominee to be considered for the award.

Criteria for selecting the award winner include originality of the proposal; significance of the potential findings; contribution to the theory, history, or criticism of public address; and appropriateness and/or innovation of the research design and method. Previous recipients of the Award are listed here.

Belinda Stillion Southard (chair), Chuck Morris, and Cara Finnegan comprise the 2016 committee.

Address questions via email to Belinda Stillion Southard at bss@uga.edu.