Communication 
Arts congratulates Allison Prasch for receiving a named professorship award: the Letters & Science Nancy Obin Sukenik Professorship. According to Eric Wilcots, Dean of the College of Letters & Science, “the holder of this award is dedicated to the understanding and strengthening of American democracy through their teaching and research.” This sentiment is evident throughout Prasch’s groundbreaking scholarship which has advanced the world’s understanding of rhetoric of the US presidency in the United States and abroad.
Professor Prasch felt incredibly humbled and honored by the news of receiving this award. “The most meaningful thing to me is this award is specifically focused on teaching, researching, and preserving American democracy, which is something that has really fueled all of my work over the last ten years,” she said.
To Prasch, this acknowledgment feels like an encouragement to continue helping students understand how democratic institutions are supposed to work and what people should expect from political leaders.
Throughout her time in Communication Arts, Professor Prasch has accomplished much. In April 2024, she led the department’s efforts to host an event featuring Pete Souza, former White House photographer for the Obama and Reagan administrations. This event allowed Souza and two other rhetorical scholars to have a public discussion about the visual stories photography tells about presidents and the rhetorical significance of this medium.
In Fall 2024, Prasch also taught Communication Arts 369: Rhetoric of the US Presidential Election. The class met throughout the 2024 presidential election. Students regularly interacted with timely news coverage and engaged in diverse group discussions to form an understanding of the presidency and how current events shape entire generations’ perspectives of the institution. Prasch and students from this course were featured both on Wisconsin Public Radio and the national election night coverage for ABC News.
Additionally, Prasch’s most recent book, The World is Our Stage, was recently honored with two awards from the National Communication Association: the 2024 Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award (Political Communication Division), and the 2024 Outstanding Book Award (American Studies Division). She accepted both awards at the National Communication Association Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana in November of 2024.
Prior to coming to UW-Madison, Professor Prasch received both her Master’s and Ph.D of Communication Studies in Rhetoric from the University of Minnesota. While there, she studied under Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, one of the foremost scholars of US presidential rhetoric and political communication. Prasch was drawn into research because of the ability to ask creative questions and search for nuanced answers. Her initial interest in the presidency asan institution and politics more generally paved the way to her research accomplishments to date.
Professor Prasch is excited to dive deeper into research this spring during her Resident Faculty Fellowship sponsored by UW-Madison’s Institute for Research in the Humanities, a prestigious university-wide competitive fellowship for faculty in the College of Letters & Science.
Following her fellowship, Prasch will be on sabbatical from Fall 2025 through Spring 2026 to continue working on her current book project, which she describes as a rhetorical study of how Washington, D.C. has been deployed as “a space and a symbol of national unity at key moments of political fissure and profound struggle over what the United States was, is, and should be.”
Communication Arts is honored to celebrate Professor Prasch for this award. She is an outstanding member of our faculty and her contributions to rhetorical studies will continue to shape the way we view the US presidency and politics for years to come.