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.

Nomination materials may be sent electronically or by post. If materials are sent by mail, please include three copies of each 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

Please submit materials electronically. For questions, contact Janet Atwill.

Janet  M. Atwill
University of Tennessee
jatwill@utk.edu

To be considered for the Dissertation Awards, a scholar must be a member of the RSA.

Deadline for Nominations:  FEBRUARY 28, 2010.  For dissertations completed between January 1, 2009  and December 31, 2009.   These awards will be presented at the 2010 RSA Conference. 

These awards will be presented at Rhetoric Society of America's 14th Biennial Conference; May 28-31; Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

2009 Judges for the Dissertation Award were Professors Janet Atwill (University of Tennessee), Richard Enos (Texas Christian University), Vanessa Beasley (Vanderbilt), and Wendy Hayden (Hunter College, CUNY).

Recipients

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