erin daina mcclellan
Research
PUBLICATIONS
mcclellan, erin daina and Christina L. Ivey. “City Living: The Significance of Critical Pedagogy for Urban Communication” in Urban Communication Reader IV: Cities as Communicative Change Agents, eds. erin d. mcclellan, Yongjun Shin, and Curry Chandler, Urban Communication Series (In Progress).
mcclellan, erin daina and Kat Davis. “Negotiating In-Between Official
Policy and Vernacular Practice: (Re)Considering Rhetorics of Recycling
and Sustainability” in Speaking with One Voice: Multivocality and Univocality in Organizing
(Chapter 8), eds. Chantal Benoit-Barné and Thomas Martine, Studies in
Communication, Organization, and Organizing Series, edited by François
Cooren (Routledge: Forthcoming).
mcclellan, erin daina. “Narrative as Vernacular Rhetoric:
Constituting Community Among Transients, Tourists, and Locals,” in
Readings in Rhetorical Fieldwork (Chapter 16), eds. Sandra Senda-Cook,
Aaron Hess, Michael Middleton, & Danielle Endres (Routledge Press:
2018).
mcclellan, erin daina. “Rhetoric as Cultural Manifestation: Moving from
Context to Culture,” in Field Rhetoric: Ethnography, Ecology, and
Engagement in the Places of Persuasion (pp. 213-230), eds. Candice Rai
and Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke (University of Alabama Press: 2018).
mcclellan, erin daina. “In the Spirit of Morality,” in Pennsylvania
Scholars Series, ed. Ronald C. Arnett (University of Pennsylvania
Press: 2016).
mcclellan, erin daina. “Reading Boise: Negotiating ‘Quality of Life’ in the Great Basin.” in Cities, Sagebrush, and Solitude: Confronting the Policy Challenges of the Great Basin eds. Dennis R. Judd and Stephanie Witt, (Reno, NV: U. of Nevada Press, 2015).
mcclellan, erin daina & Amanda Johnson Ashley. “Deep Interdisciplinarity: Teaching a City,” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 5.2 (2014), 5-23.
mcclellan, erin daina & Emily A. Fisk. “Boise’s Best”: Settling the
Spaces Between Boise’s Top 10 Awards and Other Accolades.” The Blue Review: Popular Scholarship in the Public Interest (May 2014). Available <https://thebluereview.org/>
mcclellan, erin daina. “An ‘Official’ Account: Delivering Occupy Portland’s Eviction Notice.” in Understanding Occupy from Wall Street to Portland: Applied Studies in Communication Theory, eds. Renee Guarriello Heath, Courtney Vail Fletcher, Ricardo Munoz (pp. 167-188), (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).
mcclellan, erin daina. “Rhetoricizing the Urban: Finding the Living Public in Public Plaza” lo Squaderno
(Special Issue on Urban Rhetorics), 25 (2012). [ISSN 1973-9141].
Available <http://www.losquaderno.professionaldreamers.net>
mcclellan, erin daina. “Narrative as Vernacular Rhetoric: Constituting Community Among Transients, Tourists, and Locals” Storytelling, Self, & Society 11.3 (2011), 188-210.
Hauser, Gerard A. and erin daina mcclellan. “Vernacular Rhetoric and
Social Movements: Performances of Resistance in Rhetoric of the
Everyday.” In Active Voices: Composing a Rhetoric of Social Movements ed. Sharon Stevens and Patty Malesh (pp. 23-46), (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009).
mcclellan, erin daina. “Place, Space, and Language: Vernacular Performances in and about a ‘Successful’ Urban Public Square” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (Special Issue on Cities) 4.1 (2008) Available <http://liminalities.net/4-1/>
underwood, erin daina and Frey, Lawrence R. “Communication and
Community: Creating Common Discourse across a Scholarly Community.” In Communication Yearbook 31 (pp. 370-418), (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2008).
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
Post-Tenure Sabbatical, Visiting Scholar at Københavns Universitet,
Department of Media, Communication & Cognition, Section of Rhetorik (Spring 2018)
Graduate Mentoring Award Nomination (from graduate student advisees), Boise State University Graduate College (2017).
Top 4 Paper Award in Communication Theory & Research Division of
Western States Communication Association (WSCA), Co-authored with M.A.
graduate advisee, Norell Conroy (2014-15)
National Communication Association (NCA) "International and
Intercultural Communication Division 2014 Outstanding Edited Book of
the Year," (2014) - Understanding Occupy from Wall Street to Portland: Applied Studies in Communication Theory, Rowman & Littlefield Press, 2013. Contribution: “An ‘Official’ Account: Delivering Occupy Portland’s Eviction Notice”
International Communication Assoc. (ICA) James W. Carey Urban Communication Award (2011)
National Communication Association (NCA) Urban Communication Foundation
Research Incentive Prize: “Rhetorics of Place and Space in the Public
Square: Savannah, Georgia” (2007)
ACADEMIC CONFERENCES
International Conference on Academic Identities and Higher
Education (2020): Funded through Boise State University Academic
Leadership Grant
Western States Communication Association (WSCA) Paper (2019):
“Points of Discontinuity and Perspectives by Incongruity:
(Re)Considering a Rhetoric of Recycling”
Competitively Selected Paper, Environmental Communication Division, Denver, CO
Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Paper (2020): “Living Human(e)ly: Re/Imagining the Rhetoric of Living Together”
Competitively Selected Paper, Portland, OR
Western States Communication Association (WSCA) Paper (2020):
“Analyzing an Auto-Ethnographic Narrative of Re-Enactment: Making Sense
of WWII in Denmark as Rhetorical Experience”
Competitively Selected Paper, Rhetoric & Public Address Division, Seattle, WA
National Communication Association (NCA) Urban Communication Foundation
Panel (2018): “Teaching Urban Communication from a Rhetorical
Experience Perspective”
Invited Presentation, Salt Lake City, UT
International Communication Association (ICA) Paper (2018):
“Negotiating Sustainability in the Spaces Between Official and
Vernacular Rhetorics”
Competitively Selected Paper, Prague, Czech
Københavns Universitet Department of Communication, Media, &
Cognition, Section of Rhetoric Research Paper (2018): “Rhetorical
Rhythms: Deleuze, Cultural Milieu, and Public Space”
Invited Paper, Copenhagen, Denmark
Western States Communication Association (WSCA) Paper (2017):
“Walleyball and the Socio-Material Rhetoric of Borderlands: Embodied
Experience and the Affective Turn”
Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Communication M.A. Student Kayla Griffin) Salt Lake City, UT
Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Competitivesly Selected Paper (June
2016): “‘We’re Pregnant’ or ‘I’m Pregnant’?: Embodying a Relational
Rhetorical Approach to Analyzing the Rhetoric of Pregnancy at Work”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Boise
State University Associate Professor, John McClellan), Atlanta, GA
Western States Communication Association (WSCA)
(February 2016): “Green Collar Jobs?: (Re)reading the Discourse of
Sustainability in an Era of Greenwashing”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Boise
State University Associate Professor, John McClellan) San Diego, CA
WSCA Panel Under Review (February 2016): Panel Title: “Exploring
Collaborative, Innovative, and Convergent Ways to Improve
Organizational Communication Pedagogy,” Contribution Title: “Overcoming
Expectations of ‘Professorial’ Embodiment?: Addressing Implicit Bias in
the Classroom”
• Competitively Selected Panel Submission, Organizational Communication Division, San Diego, CA
National Communication Association (NCA) Urban Communication Foundation
Preconference Paper (November 2015): “From Garden City to “Garbage
City” to “Prime Real Estate”: Chinese Gardens, Aging Mobile Homes, and
Waterfront Condos?”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with
Boise State University M.A. Student, Alexis Rivas-Martinez), Las Vegas,
NV
Mentoring Institute Paper (October 2015): “Committing to Mentoring: Creating a Relational Leadership Model”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Boise State
University Associate Professor & Director of Leadership & Human
Relations Program, Heidi Reeder), University of New Mexico Mentoring
Institute Conference, Albuquerque, NM
Conference on Communication & the Environment (COCE) Panel
Presentation (2015): “Creating Actionable Solutions to Wicked Problems
through Collaborative Environmental Communication Research,” Paper
Title: “On Behalf of a Rhetorical Relational Approach to ‘Wicked
Problems’”
• Competitively Selected Panel, Conference on Communication & the Environment (COCE), Boulder, CO
WSCA Paper Presentation (2015): “Circled Wagons and Swinging Bridges: Sophia, Sunesis, and Phronesis in Rhetorical Criticism”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Arizona State
University Assistant Professor, Aaron Hess), Rhetoric & Public
Address Division, Spokane, WA
WSCA Paper Presentation (2015): “Earth First!: A Relational Rhetorical Approach to Studying Global Social Movements”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Boise State
University M.A. Student and Research Assistant/Advisee, Norell Conroy),
Communication Theory & Research Division, Spokane, WA
• Recipient of Top 4 Paper Award in Communication Theory & Research Division
Professional & Organizational Development (P.O.D.) Leadership Institute Participant (2014)
• Represented Boise State University at Conference on “Inclusive
Leadership in a Diverse World: Leading the Change Conversation in Your
Institution,” Ithaca, NY
RSA Panel Presentation (2014): “Rhetoric, Materiality, and the Places
of Invention,” Paper Title: “Material Rhetorics and “Successful” Public
Place/Space”
• Competitively Selected Panel, Rhetoric Society of America Bi-Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX
WSCA Paper Presentation (2014): “Deep Interdisciplinarity as a Pedagogy of ‘Transfer’”
• Competitively Selected Paper, (co-authored with Boise State
University Assistant Professor, Amanda Johnson Ashley), Communication
& Instruction Division, Anaheim, CA
Communication & the City: Voices, Spaces, Media Conference Paper
Presentation (2013): “Boise’s Best: “Best of” City Accolades as a
Discursive Formation of an Ideal City”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Leeds, United Kingdom
Northwest Communication Association (NWCA) Paper (2013): “From Candidate to President: An Analysis of Linguistic Frames”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Boise State
University Undergraduate Research Assistant, Stephen Rhinehart), Media
& Cultural Studies Division, Coeur d'Alene, ID
Western Social Science Association (WSSA) Conference (2013): “Cities,
Sagebrush, and Solitude: Confronting the Policy Challenges of the Great
Basin”
• Competitively Selected Panel, Denver, CO
WSCA Paper Presentation (2013): “Translating Occupy: Global Social Movements, Culture, and Processes of Engendering Change”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Boise State
University Undergraduate Research Assistant, Stephen Rhinehart),
Rhetoric & Public Affairs Division, Reno, NV
International Communication Association (ICA) Paper Presentation
(2012): “(Re)reading the Discourses of Sustainability: A Cautionary
Tale of Being ‘Green’.”
• Competitively Selected Paper (co-authored with Boise State
University Assistant Professor John G. McClellan), Environmental
Communication Group, Phoenix, AZ
WSCA Panel Presentation (2012): “When Persuasion Seeps Beyond the Classroom: Social Change in Concept and Practice”
• Competitively Selected, Great Ideas for Teaching Students (GIFTS), Albuquerque, NM
WSCA Paper Presentation (2011): “Thinking Green: Environmentally Responsible or Economically Lucrative?”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Rhetoric & Public Address Interest Group, Monterey, CA
WSCA Panel Presentation (2011): “Teaching ‘Advanced’: How to Inspire
the Learning of Art and Skill in the Public Speaking Classroom”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Great Ideas for Teaching Students (GIFTS), Monterey, CA
NCA Paper Presentation (2010): ““Blueprint Boise”: Envisioning Our
Role(s) as Communication Scholars, Citizens of the City, and
Consultants for Hire”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Urban Communication Preconference, San Francisco, CA
RSA Paper Presentation (2010): “‘Rhetoric-izing’ the City: A Place for Theory and a Space for Praxis?”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Minneapolis, MN
NCA Paper Presentation (2008): “Defining Borders and Regulating
Movement: Differentiating Between Place and Space in Rhetorical Theory”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Rhetoric and Communication Theory Division, San Diego, CA
NCA Paper Presentation (2008): “Rhetorics of Place and Space in the Public Squares: Savannah, Georgia”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Urban Communication Foundation Preconference, San Diego, CA
NCA Panel Chair (2008): “Ethnography and Rhetoric: Theorizing and
Practicing unCONVENTIONal Approaches to Communication Research”
• Competitively Selected Panel, Ethnography Division, San Diego, CA
Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation Conference Paper
Presentation (2008): “Vernacular Sense-making and Engaging Difference
in the Public Square: Rhetorical Citizenship Negotiated”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Copenhagen, Denmark
RSA Paper Presentation (2008): “Moving Rhetoric into Place: Ethnographic Collection of Rhetorical Texts”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Seattle, WA
RSA Special Panel Presentation (2008): “Forum: Making Rhetoric Relevant
in (and out of) the Classroom and the University” - Panel Participants:
erin d mcclellan (Denison), Gerard A. Hauser (CU-Boulder), Susan
Balter-Reitz (MSU-Billings), John Ackerman (CU-Boulder), Michael Bruner
(GSU-Atlanta), Debra Hawhee (UI-Urbana-Champaign).
• Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Seattle, WA
RSA Panel Presentation (2008): “Power and Resistance in the Social
Practices of Everyday Life”; Paper Title: "Spatial Language, Rhetorics
of Place, and the Ability to Resist"
• Competitively Selected Panel, Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Seattle, WA
NCA Short Course (2007): “Communication Across the Curriculum and in the Discipline: Building and Assessing a Quality Program”
• National Communication Association Conference, Chicago, IL
NCA Paper Presentation (2006): “Christmas as Carnival: Bakhtin’s ‘Carnival’ Celebrates with Baudrillard’s ‘Leisure Time’.”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Rhetoric & Communication Theory Division, San Antonio, TX
RSA Paper Presentation (2006): “Boulder’s Boulder: Analyzing the Vernacular Rhetoric of a Boulder Landscape.”
• Competitively Selected Paper, Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Memphis, TN
NCA Paper Presentation (2005): “Aristotle’s Moral, Political, and
Intellectual Virtues as Relationally and Situationally
Meaning-Dependent”
• Competitively Selected Paper, American Society for the History of Rhetoric Division, Boston, MA
NCA Panel Presentation (2005): “From Identity to Politics: Toward a
Healthy Eclecticism in the Theory and Practice of Power”; Paper Title:
“Narrative as Vernacular Rhetoric: Constituting Community Among
Transients, Tourists, and Locals.”
• Competitively Selected Panel, Boston, MA
INVITED SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
– University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen,
Denmark, “Rhetorical Fieldwork” - Invited guest lecture in graduate
seminar in Department of Communication, Media, and Cognition, Section
of Rhetoric (2018)
Denison University, Center for Learning & Teaching, Granville, OH,
“Difference Affects Our Whistles: How Brenda J. Allen and Claude M.
Steele Invite Us to (Re)Consider our Classrooms” - This workshop
explored the ways that we consider social identity in our classrooms as
part of the landscape of inclusive excellence (2016)
Boise State University Department Chairs Council Presentation
• “Hiring for Faculty Diversity” – Best Practices for
Hiring for Inclusive Excellence Presentation based on participation in
Ithaca College’s P.O.D. Leadership Development Institute on “Inclusive
Leadership in a Diverse World” (2014)
Boise State University College of Social Sciences & Public Affairs Speaker Series
• “Translating Sustainability”: An Interdisciplinary and Community-based Pursuit (2013)
University of Idaho – Idaho Urban Research & Design Center/Architecture & Interior Design Program, Boise ID
• “Designing the Public Realm: The Role of Place and Space” (2012)
MacGregor Connections Speaker on “UrbanScapes,” Denison University, Granville, OH
• “Engaging Difference in the Public Square: Acting
as a Public Citizen in an Increasingly Private World” (2008)
RESEARCH STATEMENT
My research over the last fifteen years has focused on the various ways that people
engage in sense-making of public arenas, in terms of place
and space and more recently in terms of systems of power and complicity. By utilizing the intersections of rhetorical theory and
qualitative methods through a place-based approach to studying
rhetorics of sustainability and urban planning initiatives for public
squares and/or plazas, I'm interested in infusing official and
vernacular voices in attempt to assess and inform participatory
planning processes of all types. I see such work as able to inform
attempts to theorize rhetorics of sustainability and as significantly
related to our understandings and experiences of both place and space
in the public sphere(s). I see public squares to be important
microcosms in which publics can be tangibly studied by exploring the
actual experiences of people who engage (and resist) them in specific
ways. As people return to urban centers for various environmental,
quality of life, and economic reasons, the central public square serves
as a recurrent focus for urban planning projects that attempt to
(re)craft “desirable” urban spaces as integral components of successful
city life. Issues of access, power, resistance, and difference
naturally emerge in such places and spaces, providing rich sites from
which to study the rhetorics in and about them.
With a long-term research agenda that focuses on how such rhetorics
function in relation to the cities and towns within which vibrant (and
languid) public squares reside, I hope to continue to theorize how
rhetorics of place and space help us to understand our politics, our
communities, and ourselves in specific ways. The relationships among
rhetoric, place/space, power, resistance, agency, identity, culture,
and sustainability are of particular interest to me, and I hope to
further investigate how these elements interact in public squares in
different geographical locations around the world. My current work
focuses on four culturally distinct parts of the United States (the
Northwest, Southwest, and Southeast, and Northeast parts of the U.S.)
and attempt to connect data from culturally distinct regions from a
rhetorical perspective. In particular, I remain excited for an
opportunity to engage in the larger project of comparing, contrasting,
and integrating the data I've accumulated over the last decade in a
book-length discussion of the various facets of how we can connect
successfully (re)create public places and spaces that make sense for
the cities and towns within which they reside. It is my contention that
the ways we learn about and have experiences in public places and
spaces are powerful opportunities to shape what we think about
democracy, citizenry, and ultimately humanity.
More specifically, my focus on the relationship between public
sphere(s) and rhetoric has further taken me into the realm of
scholarship associated with the areas of interdisciplinary critical
pedagogy (see mcclellan & Ashley, 2014); rhetorical field methods
(see mcclellan, forthcoming; mcclellan, 2008); the contribution of
place-based rhetorical studies to social movement studies (see
mcclellan, 2013; Hauser & mcclellan, 2009); the relationship
between rhetorical studies and public life (see mcclellan, in press;
mcclellan & Fisk, 2014; mcclellan, 2012); and the connections
between particular communities and particular public squares forged in
rhetorically salient ways (see mcclellan 2011; mcclellan, 2008).
Combined with a consistent and established success at peer-reviewed
conference participation in my field over the last decade, I hope to
continue developing this trajectory of scholarship in the various ways
in which it has begun to emerge. Most recently, I have begun working
with a network of scholars to study the ways in which rhetorics of
sustainability (and the discourses they comprise) are salient for a
variety of stakeholders in concrete ways; a place-based rhetorical
approach to studying these rhetorics (and their larger discourses) is
of continuing interest. I hope to foster these working relationships in
the future.
DISSERTATION
"Place and Space in the Public Square: A Theoretical and Critical
Framing of Platial Vernacular Rhetoric"
Advisor: Gerard A. Hauser, Committee:
Stanley Deetz, Stewart M. Hoover, Lisa Keranen, & Nikki
Townsley
My doctoral dissertation focuses on the intersections of - and
juxtapositions between - official and vernacular rhetorics,
particularly emphasizing the rhetoric of public squares. Public
squares serve as both space and place, and therefore provide rich
sites around which to collect data. I collected both official rhetorics
from people in governmental institutions, private businesses, and
individual vendors through personal interivews, printed literatures,
and other formal texts displayed in the square, such as monuments and
plaques. I also gathered vernacular rhetorics as they were expressed by
the people who use the public squares in a variety of ways. These
included rhetorics that emerged during personal interviews, participant
observation, and photographic and video recordings. While concepts of
space and place have begun to be explored more in depth by
communication scholars, it is necessary for us to also investigate how rhetorics of place,
in particular, are involved in our understandings of power, resistance,
politics, and community. It is also important that we understand
vernacular rhetorics to be symbolic and performative in nature,
requiring in-depth analysis of such rhetoric to focus on production and
performance "in the world." I aim to ascribe to such an approach in
studying rhetoric more generally, and vernacular rhetoric more
specifically.
MASTER'S THESIS
"Narrative as Vernacular Rhetoric: Constituting Community Among
Transients, Tourists, and Locals" (2004)
Advisor: Gerard A. Hauser, Committee: Nikki Townsley
& Bryan C. Taylor
My thesis focuses on how stories function as vernacular rhetoric in the
formation and maintenance of community in a highly mobile area in
Colorado.
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