About Recovering Democracy Archives

Sponsors

The Recovering Democracy Project is sponsored by the Mark and Heather Rosenker Center for Political Communication & Civic Leadership in the Department Communication of the College of Arts & Humanities at the University of Maryland. RDA represents an extension of the Voices of Democracy (VOD) project, which is a collaboration between UMD’s RCPCCL and Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Democratic Deliberation. The VOD project was funded by an NEH Teaching and Learning Resources and Curriculum Development Grant from 2005 through 2009. VOD features essays about well-known speeches along with speech texts and teaching resources. RDA was launched with an Advancing the Discipline Grant from the National Communication Association.

Contributors

RDA was envisioned, created, and launched by Ph.D. students and faculty at the University of Maryland, including: Hagar Attia, Sarah Aghazadeh, Lauren Bender, Jaclyn Bruner, Skye de Saint Felix, Megan Fitzmaurice, Randall Fowler, Robert Gaines, Elizabeth Gardner, Morgan Hess, Will Howell, Lauren Hunter, Carol Lee, Naette Lee, Jessica Lu, Kristy Maddux, Nora Murphy, Jade Olson, Shawn Parry-Giles, Trevor Parry-Giles, Alyson Farzad Phillips, Kimberley Hannah-Prater, Yvonne Slosarski, Devin Scott, Meridith Styer, Michelle Murray Yang, and Misti Yang.

Partners

RDA is indebted to its archival partners that have contributed speeches to the textual recovery project. These archives include: the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library, University of Michigan Library, Cleveland State University Archives, United States Naval Academy, Sophia Smith Special Collection Archives at Smith College, George Meany Memorial Archives at the University of Maryland, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives at Bowdoin College Library, Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, The New York Times, Library of Congress, Louisville Courier-Journal, Hoover Institution Archives, Arab American National Museum, Hornbake Library Special Collections at the University of Maryland, Times-Leader of Wilkes-Barre, PA

Editors

Co-Editors
Shawn J. Parry-Giles, Ph.D.
Skye de Saint Felix, Ph.D.
Department of Communication
University of Maryland

Shawn J. Parry-Giles is Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the Director of the Mark and Heather Rosenker Center for Political Communication & Civic Leadership at UMD. She studies rhetoric and politics with a focus on the presidency and the first lady. She is the author, co-author, or co-editor of seven books, including: Memories of Lincoln and the Splintering of American Political Thought (with David S. Kaufer); Hillary Clinton in the News: Gender and Authenticity in American Politics; and The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945-1955. She also is co-editor of the NEH-funded Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project (with J. Michael Hogan).

Skye de Saint Felix earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Maryland in 2022, where she studied rhetoric and political culture. More specifically, she studies abortion and (im)migration politics, and issues pertaining to gender. She has been working with RDA since 2018 as a contributor and co-editor for the project. Skye has helped with grants for the project and works closely with archives and public humanities projects on behalf of RDA.