Ersula Ore

Ersula J. Ore is an associate professor of African and African American studies and rhetoric at Arizona State University. Her work examines the suasive strategies of aggrieved communities as they operate within a post-emancipation historical context. Her book "Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity" (University of Mississippi Press, 2019), Winner of the 2020 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award, explores lynching as a racialized practice of civic engagement that has, from the 1880s onward, communicated the meanings and boundaries of citizenship in the U.S. The book gives particular attention to the civic roots of lynching, the relationship between lynching and white constitutionalism, and contemporary manifestations of lynching discourse and logic today.

Professor Ore is a 2013 Institute for Humanities Research Fellow at ASU and a 2011 Penn State Alumni Association Dissertation Award Recipient. Her work can be found in the Women Studies in Commiunication, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Pedagogy, Present Tense, Rhetoric & Public Affairs and in Rhetorics of Whiteness: Postracial Hauntings in Popular Culture, Social Media, and Education (SIUP Press, 2016), Winner of the 2018 Conference on College Composition & Communication Outstanding Book Award in the Edited Collection.