Lee M. Pierce, an adjunct faculty member in the communication studies department of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, received the National Communication Association’s 2015 Stephen E. Lucas Debut Publication Award.
Given annually, the award honors an author publishing his or her first scholarly book or monograph. Pierce was recognized for her article, “Rhetoric of Traumatic Nationalism in the Ground Zero Mosque Controversy,” published in 2014 in the Quarterly Journal of Speech. The work addresses a controversy that is central to an understanding of a post-9/11 U.S., providing insight into the immediate responses as well as the lingering effects of the “rhetoric of traumatic nationalism.” It is an exemplar of rigorous rhetorical scholarship.
The National Communication Association advances communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific and aesthetic inquiry. NCA serves the scholars, teachers and practitioners who are its members by enabling and supporting their professional interests in research and teaching.