UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Mary E. Stuckey recently received the 2023 Douglas W. Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award at the National Communication Association’s (NCA) 109th annual convention in National Harbor, Maryland.
First presented in 1987, the Ehninger Award honors scholars who demonstrate sustained intellectual creativity, perseverance and academic impact in the fields of rhetorical theory, rhetorical criticism and/or public address studies, according to NCA, which advances the discipline of communication through humanistic, social scientific and aesthetic inquiry.
“NCA is proud to recognize Dr. Mary E. Stuckey’s significant contributions to the communication discipline with this award,” said Justin Danowski, NCA interim executive director.
Stuckey is among numerous Department of Communication Arts and Sciences faculty members who have received NCA awards over the years. In 2017, she received the organization’s Distinguished Scholar Award.
“This award is very meaningful — and it’s an especially nice honor to join the number of past and present Penn State faculty and alumni who have also received this honor,” Stuckey said. “I have the privilege of working with amazing colleagues in a place with a long history of excellence. It’s humbling.”
The author of 13 books, three edited volumes, and more than 80 journal articles, book chapters and invited contributions, Stuckey is acknowledged as one of the preeminent authorities in the field of presidential and political rhetoric.
“I'm interested in how presidential rhetoric influences how citizens see themselves as part of — or as excluded by — political communities,” Stuckey said. “My most recent book, ‘For the Enjoyment of the People: The Creation of National Identity in American Public Lands,’ looks at how this happens when presidents and others talk about the U.S. in and around national parks.”
According to NCA, Stuckey has also energized her field “by personally investing in the scholarship of budding and established scholars.”
Stuckey recently finished editing the book, “Deliberating the Declaration,” a set of essays about how various groups, inside the U.S. and abroad, have used the Declaration of Independence as a resource for their own claims to identity. The book, which features chapters on the Declaration in its own time and across time, will be published next year — just before the 250th anniversary of the signing of the document.
“That anniversary also got me thinking about Thomas Jefferson, and I'm just finishing a manuscript about how we remember him, and what that tells us about how we see ourselves as Americans,” Stuckey said. “Jefferson is pretty much everywhere, which is interesting — and he's something of a lightning rod for past and current controversies.”
Stuckey said her interest in presidential rhetoric was first piqued as a graduate student studying political science at the University of Notre Dame.
“Ronald Reagan was in office, and it seemed to me that there was a lot about his presidency that conventional political science couldn't understand. So, I turned to rhetoric,” Stuckey said. “I think that the meeting place of institutions and how we talk about politics is both fascinating and important, and that this has never been more clear than it is now. How we talk about politics matters.”