ASHR Social Gathering
Friday, November 20 from 6-8pm at Café Du Monde, 800 Decatur St.
Join ASHR members for informal conversation, coffee, and beignets. Drop by whenever you can!
ASHR Panels
ASHR received a limited number of slots from NCA this year, but we are excited to feature the following papers and panel discussions across three sessions.
Listening to American Social Movements: Shifting Sounds of Protest in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Friday, November 20, 2:30-3:45pm, Mardi Gras Salon B (Marriott Floor 3)
American protest movements of the 20th and 21st centuries draw on rhetorical histories of sound. The past successes and failures of sounds, chants, songs, and soundscapes shapes the rhetorical choices made by activists pushing for reform. In this panel, we attempt to craft rhetorical histories of social movement sound, particularly how social movement sounds build off of the lessons learned from past social movements in composing sounds for the newer iterations of protest.
- Lora Smith, “Labor Sounds of the Carter Family Fold Bristol Sessions”
- Dominic Manthey, “Bringing the Sound of War Home: Vietnam Veterans Against the War’s ‘Operation Dewey Canyon III’”
- Caroline Koons, “It’s Ok to Change your Mind: Rhetorical Legacies of Labor and Prison in 2025-2026 ICE Protest Songs”
Place, Displacement, and Material Invention in Rhetoric and Rhetorical History
Friday, November 20, 4-5:15pm, Mardi Gras Salon B (Marriott Floor 3)
This session explores how rhetors create meaning through spatial positioning, physical dislocation, and material manipulation of texts. These papers show rhetoric to be an embodied practice shaped by geographic constraints and material affordances. From the theoretical foundations of synecdoche—where parts invoke wholes—to the physical practice of extra-illustration’s textual remix, panelists trace how spatial and material conditions generate rhetorical invention. Two historical case studies ground these concepts: exilic rhetorics produced under South Africa’s Apartheid and John Henry McCray’s multi-modal activism in Jim Crow South Carolina. Both reveal how constraint demands creative rhetorical adaptation.
- Wanda Fenimore, “The Need for Changing: John Henry McCray’s Multi-Modal Activism in 20th Century South Carolina
- Kevin Ellis, “Synecdoche as Induction and Symbol”
- Kate Siegfried, “Exilic Rhetorics in Apartheid Era South Africa” [top paper]
- Kathryn Higinbotham, “Extra-Illustration and the Rhetoric of Material Remix” [top student paper]
Opportune Moments as Move/ments in Communication Scholarship
Saturday, November 21, 9:30-10:45am, Galerie 5 (Marriot Floor 2)
Co-sponsored with the Public Address Division
This thematic panel examines kairos – theorized as opportune moments – in a digital age in relation to the conference theme of Move/ments in Communication. The panelists invite the audience to join them in considering question(s) of opportune moments and their ephemerality – what ancient Greek rhetoricians called kairos – to explore how and to what extent we can sustain, extend, or re-experience such moments of change/transformation in and with our communities.
- Max Renner
- Victoria Gallagher
- Katrina Marks
- Codey Ryan Bills
- Aurora Bell
ASHR will not be holding a business meeting at the NCA convention but will instead hold one during our December First Friday Forum on December 4th at 1pm (Eastern). Watch your email for details and a Zoom link.
We’ll see you at NCA and at our virtual business meeting shortly thereafter!