Bradford Vivian, an associate professor of communication and rhetorical studies in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies in Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA), will present the talk “Up from Memory: Epideictic Forgetting in Booker T. Washington’s Cotton States Exposition Address” on June 18 as part of the conference “Forgetting: A Neglected Dimension of Human Existence” at Trinity College, Oxford University. The conference is organized by Oxford’s Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Centre for Theology and Modern European Thought.
Vivian is the 2011 recipient of the National Communication Association’s (NCA) James A. Winans-Herber A. Wichlens Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address. He won the award for his book “Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again” (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
In 2008, Vivian received the NCA’s Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award, which is given to foster and promote philosophical, historical or critical scholarship in rhetoric and public discourse. He holds a Ph.D. from Penn State and conducts research in rhetorical theory and criticism. His work has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Philosophy and Rhetoric, the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Rhetoric and Public Affairs and the Western Journal of Communication. He is also the author of “Being Made Strange: Rhetoric Beyond Representation” (SUNY Press, 2004).
