Allison M. Prasch
UW–Madison Resident Fellow (2024-2025)
Associate Professor, Department of Communication Arts, UW–Madison
Plot Lines: The Rhetorical Construction of Washington, D.C.
Throughout history, U.S. political leaders have deployed Washington, D.C. as a space and a symbol of national unity, a site that embodies and displays key tenets of American democratic ideals. And yet, the historical record challenges such an easy or simplistic account. Instead, the origin story of the U.S. capital city is a microcosm of the nation and its contradictions. In this presentation, I detail how competing and contradictory narratives about race, nation, and American patriotism were foundational to the initial idea, creation, and construction of the “City of Washington” between 1783 – 1800 and offer several representative anecdotes of how the meaning and symbolism of the nation’s capital city was rhetorically constructed at key moments of political fissure and profound struggle over what the United States was, is, and should be.
Dr. Allison M. Prasch is the Nancy Obin Sukenik Professor and Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of The World is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War (University of Chicago Press, 2023) and the co-editor (with Sara L. McKinnon) of Reassessing Foreign Policy Rhetorics in a Global Era: Concepts and Case Studies (Michigan State University Press, 2024). Prof. Prasch’s scholarship has appeared in the field’s most prominent journals, including Quarterly Journal of Speech, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and Rhetoric & Public Affairs, and she is the recipient of numerous scholarly awards, including the 2024 Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award from the Political Communication Division of the National Communication Association and the 2024 Outstanding Book Award from the American Studies Division of the National Communication Association. Professor Prasch also is the 2024 recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa (Alpha Chapter of Wisconsin) Excellence in Teaching Award. Her expert commentary and analysis has been featured in outlets such as National Public Radio, ABC News, the BBC, C-SPAN, Washington Post, Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report, The Hill, The Conversation, and Wisconsin Public Radio.
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