Brandon Anderson

As a critical scholar, I am concerned with how individuals and groups utilize discourse in their struggle for legitimacy. My work centers on the discursive dynamics of political advocacy and social change among groups on the fringes of society. My most substantial project interrogates the persuasive appeal and resilience of anti-nuclear discourses, through analyses of a diverse collection of texts connected to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington. In the forthcoming, peer-reviewed edited volume Networked Argument, I contribute a chapter that analyzes the ways in which local community-led advocacy challenged governmental expertise. A related essay that analyzes the production of a community’s “nuclear memory” through tours of the Hanford B Reactor was presented at the Rhetoric Society of America conference in 2018. Building upon this essay, I am preparing a book manuscript that interrogates the competing narratives of Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s 75-year relationship with southeastern Washington. Additional work that centers on freedom of expression, and political communication and identity has been published in a range of outlets.

Courses Taught