Department of Communication Arts
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Allyson Gross

Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture

Fellow

She/her/hers

 

aagross2@wisc.edu

608-263-0490

6164 Vilas Hall

Allyson Gross

Biography

Allyson Gross is a doctoral candidate in the Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture program of the Communication Arts department at UW-Madison. Her research has been supported by the Institute for Research in the Humanities through the Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellowship, a Mellon-Morgridge Fellowship, and the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies. Her work can be found in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Journal for the History of Rhetoric, and other venues.

As a rhetorical critic and historian, Allyson’s research explores how and to what end individuals, collectives, and institutions imagine the future. Her dissertation, Of Even Vaster Promise: Material Preservation and the Rhetoric of the Future, takes up this subject by interrogating the rhetorical phenomenon of material preservation for the future. Through a rhetorical analysis of three case studies—mid-20th century time capsules, cryonics, and nuclear waste—her project explores how individuals and institutions preserve material artifacts as a rhetorical response to times of crisis, and in so doing, seek to persuade or speak to posterity. From the construction of audiences across time to the curation of a selective memory of the past, this project considers what we might learn about what is valued from the study of what and why we preserve material artifacts.

Research Interests

Rhetorical theory and criticism; rhetorical history; public memory; material rhetoric; audience; time/temporality; environmental rhetoric; space/place; (outer) space exploration; archives and archival methodologies 

Education

M.A. Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin Madison, 2021

M.A. Media and Communication, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2018

B.A. History and Government & Legal Studies, Bowdoin College, 2016

Courses

  • CA 100: Introduction to Speech Composition
  • CA 155: Introduction to Digital Media Production
  • CA 260: Communication and Human Behavior
  • CA 262: Theory and Practice of Argumentation and Debate
  • CA 310: The Discourse of Dictators, Demagogues, and Extremists (grader)
  • CA 310: Rhetoric of the Cold War (grader)
  • CA 370: Great Speakers and Speeches
  • CA 373: Intercultural Communication and Rhetoric
  • CA 470: The Rhetoric of Modern Democratic Revolutions (grader)

Publications

2025. “God’s Time: Decorum and Magnitude in the Apollo 8 Genesis Reading.” With Jenell Johnson. Rhetoric & Public Affairs 28 (1), 35-64, https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.28.1.0035.

2022. “We, Who Are About to Die: On the Haunting of the Mid-20th Century American Time Capsule.” Journal for the History of Rhetoric 25 (2), 132-151, https://doi.org/10.5325/jhistrhetoric.25.2.0132.

2020. “To Wave a Flag: Identification, #BlackLivesMatter, and Populism in Harry Styles Fandom.” Transformative Works and Cultures no. 32. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1765.

2016. “Injustice Is Not an Investment: Student Activism, Climate Justice, and the Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign.” Co-authored with Joe Curnow. In Contemporary Youth Activism: Advancing Social Justice in the United States. Ed. Jerusha Conner and Sonia M. Rosen. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

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