Joan McAlister, associate professor of rhetoric and communication studies at Drake University, was recently awarded the 2013 National Communication Association Visual Communication Division Award for her outstanding essay titled, “Collecting the Gaze: Memory, Agency, and Kinship in the Women’s Jail Museum, Johannesburg.” Her essay was published in Women’s Studies in Communication Vol. 36 in February of 2013.
McAlister received the award in November at the Visual Communication Division Business Meeting at the National Communication Association Convention in Washington D.C. The award is the most competitive in its division.
Some of McAlister’s research interests include feminist theory, queer theory and activism, public memory, domesticity, and aesthetics in popular culture. She is currently editor-elect of Women’s Studies in Communication and is authoring a manuscript on the concept of home that explores the roles of the body, residence, region, and nation as modes of social location.