Dissertation Award

The RSA Dissertation Award is presented yearly for the best dissertation in the field of Rhetorical Studies completed by a student member of the Society.

Submit nominations to the Awards Committee Chair:

Professor Lester C. Olson
Department of Communication
1117 Cathedral of Learning
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260

A complete nomination package should include 3 copies of the following:

  • dissertation abstract;
  • letter of recommendation from the supervising professor certifying that the dissertation was defended within the eligibility period;
  • a thirty-five page extract from the dissertation.

Electronic nomination materials preferred; send nomination and any email queries to olson@pitt.edu.

Deadline for nominations: February 15, 2013.

Dissertations are eligible if they were defended between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012. To be considered for the Dissertation Award, the scholar must be a member of RSA.

Recipients

Lindsay Rose Russell

2013 Award

“Women in the English Language Dictionary”
University of Washington, co-chairs Anis Bawarshi and Colette Moore

Henrietta Rix Wood

2012 Award

"Praising Girls: The Epideictic Rhetoric of Young Women, 1895-1930."
Advisor Jane Greer.

Christa J. Olson

2011 Award

Constitutive Visions: Indigeneity, Visual Culture, and the Rhetorics of Ecuadorian National Identity
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign under the direction of Debra Hawhee and Ralph Cintron, English

Nancy Bixler

2011 Award (Honorable Mention)

Walk Me Home: How Bodies Move and are Moved in the Breast Cancer Walk
University of Washington under the direction of Leah Ceccarrelli, Communication.

Sarah Overbaugh Hallenbeck

2010 Award

Writing the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric, And Technology In Late Nineteenth-Century America.
Duke University Under direction of Jane Danielewicz & Jordynn Jack

Rosalyn Collings Eves, PhD

2009 Award

Mapping Rhetorical Frontiers: Women's Spatial Rhetorics in the Nineteenth-Century American West.
Penn State University under the direction of Cheryl Glenn.

Charlotte Robidoux, PhD

2009 Award (Honorable Mention)

Human Genome Project Discoveries: Dialectics and Rhetoric in the Science of Genetics.
Catholic University of America under the direction of Jean Dietz Moss.

Jennifer Cellio, PhD

2009 Award (Honorable Mention)

‘More children from the fit, less from the unfit': Discourses of Hereditary ‘Fitness and Reproductive Rhetorics, post Darwin to the 21st Century.
Miami University under the direction of Cindy Lewiecki-Wilson.

Wendy Hayden

2008 Award

Unlikely Rhetoric Allies
University of Maryland; directed by Jeanne Fahnestock

David Tell

2007 Award

Politics of Public Confession: Expressivism and American Democracy
Dissertation completed at Penn State University

Patricia M. Malesh

2006 Award

"Rhetorics of Consumption: Identity, Confrontation, and Corporatization in the American Vegetarian Movement"
Department of English, University of Arizona

Shevaun Watson

2005 Award

"Unsettled Cities: Rhetoric and Race in the Early Republic."
Dissertation completed at Miami University.

David Gold

2004 Award

Never Mind What Harvard Thinks: Alternative Sites of Rhetorical Instruction in American Colleges, 1873-1947
Written at the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Linda Ferreira-Buckley