Shawn J. Parry-Giles
Chair, Communication
Professor, Communication
spg@umd.edu
2126 Skinner Building
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Education
Ph.D., , Indiana University
Research Expertise
Gender
Political Communication
Rhetoric
Dr. Shawn J. Parry-Giles is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication at UMD.
She also serves as the Director of the Rosenker Center for Political Communication & Civic
Leadership. Dr. Parry-Giles studies rhetoric and politics with a focus on the relationship between
power and resistance in historical and contemporary politics. She has co-authored and co-edited
eight books and a diversity of journal articles on presidential rhetoric, women and politics, media
and politics, and political identity and feminism. She teaches classes in political communication,
presidential rhetoric, democratic deliberation, and academic writing.
As Director of the Rosenker Center, Dr. Parry-Giles co-edits two public and digital humanities
projects designed to promote civic education through open-access websites that exemplify the
role of public oratory in local, national, and global politics. Each website features a repository of
historical public speeches and teaching resources that contextualize the rhetorical contributions
of community activists and political leaders. The first is an academic journal entitled, the Voices
of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project (with Drs. J. Michael Hogan and Skye de Saint
Felix)—a project initially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The second is
the Recovering Democracy Archives: Speech Recovery Project (with Dr. Skye de Saint
Felix), which recovers lesser-known speeches from archives of those advancing social justice
aims. This project was funded by the Waterhouse Family Institute of Villanova University.
Dr. Parry-Giles also helps mentor students in the principles of democratic deliberation to
organize public dialogues around pressing political issues. Through the Rosenker Center she also
aims to build community partnerships with non-profit political groups working locally to
advance student civic engagement.
Dr. Parry-Giles also co-edits (with Dr. Leroy Dorsey) the book series—The Rhetoric of Power
and Protest—with Michigan State University Press.
Dr. Parry-Giles’s books include:
- Hillary Clinton’s Life in Speeches: The Promises and Perils of Women’s Rhetorical Adaptivity with Michigan State University Press, 2023 (with David S. Kaufer and Xizhen Cai).
- Memories of Lincoln and the Splintering of American Political Thought with Penn State University Press, 2017 (with David S. Kaufer).
- Hillary Clinton in the News: Gender and Authenticity in American Politics, with the University of Illinois Press, 2014 (recipient of the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award).
- The Prime-Time Presidency: The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism with the University of Illinois Press, 2006 (with Trevor Parry-Giles).
- Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address, ed. vol., 2010 (with J. Michael Hogan).
- Public Address and Moral Judgment: Critical Studies in Ethical Tensions, ed. vol., 2009 (with Trevor Parry-Giles).
- The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945-1955 with Praeger Press, 2002 (named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title).
- Constructing Clinton: Hyperreality and Presidential Image-Making in Postmodern Politics with Peter Lang Press, 2002 (with Trevor Parry-Giles)
Dr. Parry-Giles’s current research projects address the debate over the Exoduster movement in
the post-Reconstruction era that marked a mass migration of freed enslaved people out of the
South to states like Kansas and Missouri. A second one compares the speeches that Frederick
Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave in 1848 on abolition and women’s rights respectively
in the context of the 1848 Revolutions in Europe.
Dr. Parry-Giles has published articles in such outlets as the Associated Press, Daily
Kos, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Salon, and U.S. News and World Report.
Publications
Hillary Clinton’s Career in Speeches: The Promises and Perils of Women’s Rhetorical Adaptivity
"Hillary Clinton’s Career in Speeches" examines how women candidates, like Clinton, navigate the dual pressures of proving competence and likability in presidential politics.
Author/Lead: Shawn J. Parry-Giles
Women candidates are under more pressure to communicate competence and likability than men. And when women balance these rhetorical pressures, charges of inauthenticity creep in, suggesting the structural and strategic anti-woman backlash at play in presidential politics. Hillary Clinton demonstrated considerable ability to adapt her rhetoric across roles, contexts, genres, and audiences. Comparisons between Clinton’s campaign speeches and those of her presidential opponents (Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump) show that her rhetorical range exceeded theirs. And comparisons with Democratic women candidates of 2020 suggest they too exhibited a rhetorical range and faced a backlash similar to Clinton. Hillary Clinton’s Career in Speeches combines statistical text-mining methods with close reading to analyze the rhetorical highs and lows of one of the most successful political women in U.S. history. Drawing on Clinton’s oratory across governing and campaigning, the authors debunk the stereotype that she was a wooden and insufferably wonkish speaker. They marshal evidence for the argument that the sexist tactics in American politics function to turn women’s rhetorical strengths into political liabilities.