Danielle E. Endres, Ph.D.

Although I have engaged in the intersections of rhetorical criticism and ethnographic participant observation since graduate school, I began work on a dedicated line of theoretical and methodological research devoted to a meta-level understanding of the “participatory turn” in rhetorical scholarship. By participatory turn, I am referring to the increasing trend in rhetorical criticism to combine rhetorical and qualitative forms of inquiry as a way to access and analyze unconventional, embodied, and emplaced rhetorical texts. This line of inquiry is a collaboration with Professor Samantha Senda-Cook (Creighton University), Professor Michael Middleton (University of Utah), and Professor Aaron Hess (Arizona State University). In “Articulating Rhetorical Field Methods” (Western Journal of Communication), which won the 2012 B. Aubrey Fisher Award from the Western States Communication Association, Middleton, Senda-Cook, and I first laid out an argument for “rhetorical field methods” as an invitation for a more programmatic discussion of how rhetorical critics employ qualitative methods. This essay advanced rhetorical field methods as an approach to research drawing from lineages in critical rhetoric, ethnography, and performance. Since publishing “Articulating Rhetorical Field Methods,” we expanded our collaboration to include Professor Aaron Hess and co-wrote Participatory Critical Rhetoric: Theoretical and Methodological Foundations for Studying Rhetoric In Situ (Lexington Press, 2015). Building from rhetorical field methods and Professor Hess’ work on critical rhetorical ethnography, this book offers Participatory Critical Rhetoric as an approach to rhetorical inquiry that expands the project of critical rhetoric, furthers understanding of emplaced and embodied vernacular rhetoric, and contributes to ongoing theoretical and methodological conversations in rhetorical studies more broadly, such as the role of text/context, material rhetoric, emplaced rhetoric, and the role of the critic. This book won the National Communication Association Critical & Cultural Studies Division’s Outstanding Book of the Year Award in 2016. After completing the book, I served as the lead editor for a special issue on Rhetorical Fieldwork  Cultural Studies⬄Critical Methodologies. This special issue moves beyond the common discussion of what ethnography, performance, and qualitative inquiry can bring to rhetoric, and instead promotes rhetorical fieldwork as a contribution to the broader community of qualitative inquiry scholars. Most recently, we have edited an anthology of key readings in Rhetorical Fieldwork. 

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