Patrick Kekoa Nichols

Patrick Kekoa Nichols is a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric at the University of Georgia's Department of Communication Studies. His research focuses on how constitutive rhetoric produces public subjects, historical narratives, and infrastrucutre of governance. By using rhetorical theory and discourse analysis Nichols investigates how legal texts, public address and state documents function as technologies of power in the formation of subjects resulting in the materializaiton of identities, public memory and power within colonial and postcolonial contexts. His work emphasizes rhetorical historiography recognizing discourse of empire, law and national security as retroactively constructing historical meaning. 

Nichols holds an M.A. in History from Harvard University, where his thesis interrogated the juridical imposition of martial law in Hawai‘i as a mode of U.S. military occupation catalyzing statehood efforts in the territory of Hawaii. His broader research explores archival silence, rhetorical erasure, and the discursive labor of empire in shaping what and who counts as historically recognized.

He regularly presents at academic conferences and is pursuing projects that explore how rhetorical practices of memory and archival narratives shape public culture. His work critically engages with oral history and digital humanities platforms to interrogate the discursive construction and contestation of U.S. national identity.