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.

Back to Home