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Graduate Program

Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies

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The master of arts (M.A.) in communication and rhetorical studies provides a vibrant and dynamic environment for students hoping to pursue further study in communication studies. Our program has a strong academic research focus and is ideal if you plan to go on to pursue doctoral-level education.

Admission Requirements + Deadlines

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Our M.A. degree program features nationally and internationally prominent, award-winning faculty who balance deep roots in the discipline with interdisciplinary innovations. Its curriculum stresses theoretical and methodological diversity, close guidance and advising by faculty instructors, and high academic standards. We specialize in training M.A. candidates to thrive as teachers and scholars and to succeed at the most renowned doctoral programs in the country.

Areas of Specialty

Graduate seminars and research in the CRS department offer training in the following areas, which we invite students to approach in a spirit of academic exploration and collaboration:

Language and Social Interaction

Courses and research in this area feature work in discourse or conversation analysis that seeks to explain communication processes in many facets of human communication and interaction. Common topics include identity, family interaction, cultural or intercultural discourse, health communication, environmental deliberation, multimodality, and digital media. Other topics that our faculty and students in this area increasingly examine include environmental and health communication.

Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies

This area uses a variety of critical, feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial perspectives to examine the relationship between communication and questions of power, equality, and social advocacy. Courses and research projects examine such specific topics as disparities in political representation, personal identity and difference, non-hierarchical organizing processes, alternative forms of public dialogue, community activism and organizing, and other social justice issues.

Rhetorical Theory and Criticism

Coursework and research in rhetoric encompasses the history of public address, the rhetoric of political or social movements, and contemporary rhetorical theories. Work in this area focuses on the role of persuasive influence or symbolic action in public affairs across a variety of texts, sites, and modes of communication. Faculty-guided research in rhetoric includes studies of presidential address, public memory, visual rhetoric and media culture, queer theory or criticism, and continental theory.

Our M.A. program is designed to allow students to either specialize in one of these areas of research or combine them to develop their own distinctive scholarly profile. Common efforts to demonstrate the importance of communication and rhetoric to vital questions of political power, social influence, and personal identity unify instruction in all of the aforementioned topics. The M.A. degree in communication and rhetorical studies is a national leader in graduate education because it combines disciplinary traditions with interdisciplinary innovations to consistently produce student excellence.

Meet the students


Faculty and Alumni Accomplishments

The relatively small communication and rhetorical studies faculty has produced numerous books, articles in refereed academic journals, and book chapters. They have national and international reputations as scholars, teachers, and mentors, and our M.A. program is considered by most in the discipline to be the best in the nation.

CRS faculty and graduate students have earned a notably high number of research awards and competitive grants, commensurate in quantity and quality with the most prestigious doctoral-level faculty and graduate students in our field. Faculty honors and awards have been received in the following categories:

  • Scholarly recognition from the National Communication Association (NCA), our leading professional organization, in the form of multiple book and article awards; multiple former Wallace Memorial and New Investigator Award winners, recognizing early-career scholars teaching and mentorship awards; and distinguished scholar/ship awards. Faculty have also received multiple scholarship and teaching awards at the regional and state level.
  • Fulbright, NEH, and Humanities Fellowships at University of Malaysia, Punjab University, Syracuse University, Massey University, and Vanderbilt University, and visiting faculty appointments.
  • Competitive internal and external research grants.
  • Other distinctions include a Meredith Teaching Professorship; multiple faculty, service, or teaching awards from VPA and the University.

The faculty has also distinguished itself in the prestigious disciplinary organizational positions they have held, including the presidency and board of directors of the Rhetoric Society of America; National Communication Association Publications Board membership and divisional chairpersons; book review editorships; and co-founding the journal QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking. Finally, our faculty features board members on multiple elite journals inside and outside the discipline.


Curriculum

Our curriculum has earned national and international honors based on a proven record of scholarly and pedagogical excellence in rhetoric, critical/cultural studies, and discourse analysis.

Further Curriculum Details

We maintain a curricular vision of worldmaking education through theoretical, critical, historical, and performative intervention (feminist, queer, critical race, Marxist, post-colonial theories; historiography; critical and analytical methods; engaged scholarship). This curricular vision is interdisciplinary and global in its grasp and reach, with existing research strengths in security studies; social movements; gender, race, and sexuality studies; and health, intercultural, organizational and environmental communication.

Graduate students in the communication and rhetorical studies program begin with two core courses designed to introduce them to the department: Contemporary Theories of Rhetoric (CRS 603) and Critical Media and Cultural Studies (CRS 607). After these core courses (required during the first semester of M.A. coursework), students will work with their selected faculty advisors to choose from a wide variety of courses in the department and across the University to create their own unique programs of study.

The graduate elective courses offered depend on faculty expertise and student interest. Some of the graduate electives taught recently include:

  • Public Memory
  • Talk and the Body
  • Visual Culture
  • Rhetorical Criticism
  • Queer Rhetorics
  • Performance and Culture
  • Rhetoric and Social Justice
  • Rhetoric of Fashion
  • Foucault and Rhetoric
  • Speechwriting
  • Rhetoric of Film
  • Feminist Rhetorics
  • Epidemic Rhetorics
  • Intercultural Communication
  • Race, Rhetoric, and Masculinity
  • Digital Performance in Everyday Life
  • Communication and Climate Crisis

View full curriculum for the M.A. in CRS.

Downloads

  • Master Theses from the CRS Program   [pdf, 98KB]

Program Faculty

  • Erin J. Rand, Program Coordinator
  • Rachel E. Dubrofsky
  • Lyndsay Michalik Gratch
  • Diane Grimes
  • Rachel Hall
  • Charles E. Morris III
  • Kendall R. Phillips
  • Sylvia Sierra

Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies

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Related Pages

  • CRS Graduate Student Handbook
  • CRS Resources & Answers Section
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