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Savannah Downing

PhD Candidate
Grad Forum President (2021-2022)

Contact Info

Office:
513 Caldwell Hall

Savannah Downing is a PhD candidate in Rhetorical Studies. Her work engages feminist rhetorical theories and methodologies at the nexus of labor, reproductive, environmental, and racial justice. Her dissertation examines the relationship between public memory and its mediated materiality through the development of a rhetorical methodology she names diffractive re-membrance

Savannah recently published an essay in the Quaterly Journal of Speech on reproductive justice rhetorics. Her works-in-progress include a rhetorical analysis of a bulletproof memorial sign that remembers Emmett Till as it relates to the Movement for Black Lives, and a rhetorical analysis of photojournalism in the 1930s that depicts radium poisoning during The Radium Girls' lawsuits for occupational disease compensation. 

https://comm.uga.edu/news/stories/2022/downing-awarded-willson-center-grant

https://comm.uga.edu/news/stories/2022/outstanding-teaching-assistant-recognition-2022

Education:

Savannah holds BAs from the University of Georgia in English, where she concentrated in multicultural literature and earned an interdisciplinary writing certificate, and Women's Studies. 

She earned an MA in Communication Studies with a focus in rhetoric and civic engagement from Colorado State University, along with a graduate certificate in Women's and Gender Studies.

She joined the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Georgia in the fall of 2019 as a Rhetorical Studies PhD student. 

Savannah is a recipient of the South Georgia Graduate Fellowship and was a 2022 Future Faculty Fellow. She also served as the Communication Coordinator of NCA's Activism and Social Justice Division Graduate Student Committee and as an officer with the United Campus Workers of Georgia UGA Chapter.

Savannah is a recipient of the South Georgia Graduate Fellowship and was a 2022 Future Faculty Fellow. She also served as the Communication Coordinator of NCA's Activism and Social Justice Division Graduate Student Committee and as an officer with the United Campus Workers of Georgia UGA Chapter.

Courses Regularly Taught:
Curriculum Vitae:

Major Professor

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