Paul Elliott Johnson awarded the American Studies Division of the National Communication Association's Outstanding Article of the Year Award

The American Studies Division of the National Communication Association awarded Assistant Professor Paul Elliott Johnson their award for Outstanding Article of the Year, for his essay “The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s Demagoguery,” which appears in a 2017 issue of Women’s Studies in Communication. Drawing on both media coverage of the campaign and Trump’s own speeches and performances, the essay examines how Trump’s campaign succeeded by converting the uncertainty inherent in liberal democratic life into a masculine affect of danger and victimhood. The paper not only argues that the ability to generate this felt precarity helped otherwise well-off audiences to imagine themselves as aggrieved—and therefore justified in voting for Trump and his demagogic campaign—but also helps explain why audiences could disavow or even identify with some of Trump’s most noxious misogynistic and racist sentiments.