Belinda A. Stillion Southard

Belinda joined the department in fall 2011 to teach and research in the general areas of rhetorical criticism and public address. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication and a Women's Studies Certificate from the University of Maryland. Her research and teaching interests are grounded in the public address tradition and are guided by questions regarding gender, transnationalism, and citizenship. These interests are reflected in her most recent book, How to Belong: Women's Agency in a Transnational World (2018, Pennsylvania State University Press) which centers on how women conceptualize belonging in the contexts of regional movements, the nation-state, and supranational organizations. The book is a winner of the 2019 Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award, presented by the Public Address Division of the National Communication Association. You can listen to a podcast interview on the book here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/belinda-stillion-southard-how-to-belong-womens-agency-in-a-transnational-world-penn-state-up-2018/

She has recently completed a draft of her most recent book project, Belonging, Otherwise: Lessons from the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. The book draws lessons on how to inhabit an otherwise existence from a women's protest camp that endured from 1981-2000. From witch and web discourse, the campers teach us how to exist in otherwise temporalities, amidst shifting coalitional belongings, and in radical entanglements. 

She is also the author of Militant Citizenship: Rhetorical Strategies of the National Woman's Party, 1913-1920. The book also won the 2012 Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award. It also received an Honorable Mention designation for the 2012 Winifred Bryan Horner Book Award given by the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition.

Belinda's research has also appeared in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication Quarterly, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Advances in the History of Rhetoric, and elsewhere. In 2013, she delivered a TEDx talk, "Change the Language, Change the Beliefs," at UGA's first TEDxUGA event. Last, her strategies for teaching militant rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement have been featured in Chalk Talk, sponsored by UGA's Teaching Academy Fellows program.

Belinda's Leadership and Service Includes:

• Interim Department Head, 2025-2026.
• Graduate Coordinator, 2017-2020, 2022-2023.
• Associate Department Head, 2021-2022.
• Basic Course Director, Introduction to Public Speaking, 2020-2021.
• Member (2020), Committee on Committees, Rhetoric Society of America.
• Vice President (2020), Division Planner, Public Address Division, National Communication Association (NCA).
• Vice President Elect (2019), Public Address Division, NCA.
• Chair (2018) and Elected Member (2016-17), Winans-Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address Committee, Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division, NCA.
• Elected Member, Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Public Address, NCA, Public Address Division, 2016-2017.
• Elected Member, Legislative Assembly, NCA, 2014-2016.
• Chair (2016) and Elected Member (2014-15), Benson-Campbell Dissertation Award Committee, NCA, Public Address.
• Area Chair, Rhetorical Studies, 2014-2017.
• Chair (2015) and Appointed Member (2014), Rhetoric Society of America Dissertation Award Committee.
• Chair and Co-Organizer, Competitively Selected Preconference, “Situated Discourses of Citizenship,” NCA, Washington, DC, 2013.