Student Research Opportunities and Conferences

Professional Organizations and Research Opportunities

The Department of Rhetoric, Writing and Public Discourse offers a wide variety of ways for students to become involved in public conversations as well as to present their scholarship. These include professional organizations as well as local research conferences. A few are listed here. For more information, contact the current chair of RWPD, Matthew Bost, at bostmw@whitman.edu.

• The Whitman College Undergraduate Research Conference
• Western States Communication Association
• Rhetoric Society of America
• The Conference on College Composition and Communication
• National Communication Association
• Whitman is also a regular participant in the Annual Pacific Northwest Race, Rhetoric, and Media Undergraduate Research Symposium, an invited regional conference for Pacific Northwest Undergraduate programs in rhetoric and media including Whitman College, the University of Puget Sound, Willamette University, and Lewis & Clark College. The symposium rotates between its participant schools.

Recent Rhetoric Student Research Presentations

• Emma Dulaney, "Framing the (Un)grievable American Citizen: Black Precarity and the Katrina-Event," National Communication Association Annual Convention, Winner of the James L. Golden Outstanding Student Essay in Rhetoric Award, November 2017.
• Samantha Grainger-Shuba, "This is Not a Legal Proceeding: Deconstructing the New Title IX," National Communication Association Annual Convention, Winner of the James L. Golden Outstanding Student Essay in Rhetoric Award, November 2016.
• Meredith Ruff, “Rude Noises: Homocore, Unsettling the Symbolic, and Enjoying Abjection," Southern States Communication Association, Theodore Clevenger Undergraduate Honors Conference, April 8, 2016. (Winner of Whitman College's David Nord Award, given for projects designed to address critical issues facing queer communities through a variety of creative and scholarly mediums)
• Vicky Su, "The Dilemma of the Tiger Mother: The American Dream and Tokenism," presented at the Western States Communication Association Undergraduate Scholars Conference, February 27, 2016.