Heather Ashley Hayes
Dr. Heather Ashley Hayes is a researcher, writer, and educator. Her research is drawn from questions animated and rooted in the fields of rhetorical studies, argumentation studies, neuroscience, and critical/cultural studies. The work she has published is interested in what she often refers to as a working notion of rhetoric: the ways that symbols are used to address matters of common concern. Or: the use of symbols to talk about, and often take action around, things people care about. Almost always, the things people care about substantially impact their lives. And sometimes, those things are matters of life and death. Dr. Hayes's work argues that closer understandings of how rhetoric and public discourse carry transformative potential are crucial for investigating social or structural change.
More specifically, her research interrogates and maps new formations of exclusion and violence communities face in the post 9/11 global landscape. She wants to know what avenues communities, organizations, and the public generate for making sense of, and living, in the wake of these formations. Throughout her scholarly trajectory, she generally asks three main questions: 1) What role does rhetoric play in facilitating the conditions of possibility for social and civic engagement by those living in and between these formations? 2) How does rhetoric and public discourse function in the service of social and institutional power? 3) What is the relationship between violence and rhetoric, in the context of social and civic engagement?
Dr. Hayes is currently appointed in the Department of Communication Studies in the College of Communication & Information Sciences at the University of Alabama, USA. Her first book, Violent Subjects and Rhetorical Cartography in the Age of the Terror Wars (Palgrave Macmillan) dropped in 2016, joining a number of other article, review, and chapter length academic pieces. She presents research across the US, Middle East, and Europe to audiences both in academic spaces and outside of the university.
Dr. Hayes has been privileged throughout her career to teach at institutions ranging from small liberal arts colleges in the Pacific Northwest of the US to a large public high school in Texas and many spaces in between. In that teaching career, she has taught courses in oral communication and public speaking, rhetoric and public culture, rhetorical criticism and theory, US American film, social movements in global contexts, political communication and health, intercultural communication, African American civil rights and protest, and rhetoric and violence. She has been honored through various recognitions, at campus and national levels, including most recently being named the 2023 recipient of the National Communication Association Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teacher in Higher Education as well as the recipient of the 2024 John I Sisco Excellence in Teaching Award from the Southern States Communication Association.
More specifically, her research interrogates and maps new formations of exclusion and violence communities face in the post 9/11 global landscape. She wants to know what avenues communities, organizations, and the public generate for making sense of, and living, in the wake of these formations. Throughout her scholarly trajectory, she generally asks three main questions: 1) What role does rhetoric play in facilitating the conditions of possibility for social and civic engagement by those living in and between these formations? 2) How does rhetoric and public discourse function in the service of social and institutional power? 3) What is the relationship between violence and rhetoric, in the context of social and civic engagement?
Dr. Hayes is currently appointed in the Department of Communication Studies in the College of Communication & Information Sciences at the University of Alabama, USA. Her first book, Violent Subjects and Rhetorical Cartography in the Age of the Terror Wars (Palgrave Macmillan) dropped in 2016, joining a number of other article, review, and chapter length academic pieces. She presents research across the US, Middle East, and Europe to audiences both in academic spaces and outside of the university.
Dr. Hayes has been privileged throughout her career to teach at institutions ranging from small liberal arts colleges in the Pacific Northwest of the US to a large public high school in Texas and many spaces in between. In that teaching career, she has taught courses in oral communication and public speaking, rhetoric and public culture, rhetorical criticism and theory, US American film, social movements in global contexts, political communication and health, intercultural communication, African American civil rights and protest, and rhetoric and violence. She has been honored through various recognitions, at campus and national levels, including most recently being named the 2023 recipient of the National Communication Association Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teacher in Higher Education as well as the recipient of the 2024 John I Sisco Excellence in Teaching Award from the Southern States Communication Association.
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Books by Heather Ashley Hayes
Looking to the circulating technologies of the United States drone program in the Arab world, and to spaces of revolution in the Arab Spring (including Egypt's Tahrir Square), this manuscript expands the ways rhetorical studies has conceptualized the relationship between violence and discourse while also contributing to a growing conversation about state power and violence. It generates political and cultural insights about the possibilities for newly formed subjectivities and their relationship to violence within the global war on terror and beyond. The manuscript argues that these insights point to a refiguration of the rhetorical situation as primarily composed of bodies, spaces/places, and technologies and attends to the ways different subjectivities arise and circulate within larger maps of contemporary global power.
More specifically, for interdisciplinary modes of investigation, the project develops rhetorical cartography as a method of inquiry, drawing foundationally from both rhetorical studies and from critical cartography and geography. This method allows for mapping of modes of materiality within rhetorical situations and global cultural moments in addition to expanding possibilities for rhetorical critics and theorists to confront transnational socio-political culture. Finally, the project suggests new understandings of the conjuncture of the global war on terror and its impacts on North Africa and the Middle East. Here, the project posits that through rhetorical cartography, we can better examine the multitude of ways that subject positions are generated, changed, and reconstituted for people to occupy within the global war on terror.
Violent Subjects has been reviewed widely since its release. It has been labeled “insightful and provocative” (Rhetoric and Public Affairs) and has been said to “offer useful frameworks for future work” (Rhetoric Review). It has also been called “incredibly important” as a "contribution that “transcends rhetoric” (Rhetoric Society Quarterly). Additionally, scholars have said the book “deepens our understanding of rhetorical theory and method, contributes to our knowledge of the ways in which violence and war are deeply rhetorical, and adds to the scholarly conversation on empire and colonialization” in addition to offering “a new and provocative thesis on the rhetoric of violence.”
Selected Published Articles and Book Chapters by Heather Ashley Hayes
Selected Book Reviews and Review Essays by Heather Ashley Hayes
Looking to the circulating technologies of the United States drone program in the Arab world, and to spaces of revolution in the Arab Spring (including Egypt's Tahrir Square), this manuscript expands the ways rhetorical studies has conceptualized the relationship between violence and discourse while also contributing to a growing conversation about state power and violence. It generates political and cultural insights about the possibilities for newly formed subjectivities and their relationship to violence within the global war on terror and beyond. The manuscript argues that these insights point to a refiguration of the rhetorical situation as primarily composed of bodies, spaces/places, and technologies and attends to the ways different subjectivities arise and circulate within larger maps of contemporary global power.
More specifically, for interdisciplinary modes of investigation, the project develops rhetorical cartography as a method of inquiry, drawing foundationally from both rhetorical studies and from critical cartography and geography. This method allows for mapping of modes of materiality within rhetorical situations and global cultural moments in addition to expanding possibilities for rhetorical critics and theorists to confront transnational socio-political culture. Finally, the project suggests new understandings of the conjuncture of the global war on terror and its impacts on North Africa and the Middle East. Here, the project posits that through rhetorical cartography, we can better examine the multitude of ways that subject positions are generated, changed, and reconstituted for people to occupy within the global war on terror.
Violent Subjects has been reviewed widely since its release. It has been labeled “insightful and provocative” (Rhetoric and Public Affairs) and has been said to “offer useful frameworks for future work” (Rhetoric Review). It has also been called “incredibly important” as a "contribution that “transcends rhetoric” (Rhetoric Society Quarterly). Additionally, scholars have said the book “deepens our understanding of rhetorical theory and method, contributes to our knowledge of the ways in which violence and war are deeply rhetorical, and adds to the scholarly conversation on empire and colonialization” in addition to offering “a new and provocative thesis on the rhetoric of violence.”