Thesis
My research agenda explores how rhetoric and mediated representations have configured immigrants and refugees historically and in the current context. I focus primarily on the ways in which Syrian immigrants and refugees are represented in immigration discourses during the Trump-era, within ideals of American moral exceptionalism and xenophobic discourses of exclusion.
The first part of the thesis will involve a rhetorical analysis of the rhetoric of politicians and diplomats, the rhetoric of influential mass media outlets, and refugee representations in non-profit refugee resettlement organizations in the United States. The second pivotal part of the thesis will be to give voice to those intimately affected by these discourses, namely their perspective, their heritage and their history. As such, I will consider the Syrian perspectives on the Syrian conflict and the refugee crisis. Firstly, I will engage in an auto-ethnography based on my embodied experience as a Syrian/diasporic immigrant in the United States. Secondly, I will examine the rhetoric of Syrian activists and dissidents, identified as a counter-public, in response to hegemonic voices in the political sphere who have spoken on behalf of Syrians and Syrian refugees. Finally, I will engage in a rhetorical analysis on Syrian documentaries on the revolution.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Ghazal Aswad, N. (2024). On the unsafe homecoming of refugees: Unraveling environmental
injustice and land dispossession in the Syrian refugee crisis. Environmental Communication.
10.1080/17524032.2023.2296831
Ghazal Aswad, N. & Smith, D. (2023). Teaching racial rhetorical criticism: Racial reckoning oncampus. Communication Teacher, 38(1), 34-40. doi: 10.1080/17404622.2023.2264368
Ghazal Aswad, N. (2023). Reverse moral exceptionalism and the American Left: When do
villains become heros? Quarterly Journal of Speech, 109(4), 354-375. doi:
10.1080/00335630.2023.2250580
Ghazal Aswad, N. & Lechuga, M. (2023). Led by the land: Recovering land agency and
interconnectedness in social movement scholarship. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 26(3 or 4),
(accepted but delayed - special issue).
Ghazal Aswad, N. (2021). Radical rhetoric: Towards a telos of solidarity. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 24(1-2), 207-222. doi:10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0207
Ghazal Aswad, N. & de Velasco, A. (2020). Redemptive exclusion: A case study of Nikki Haley’s rhetoric on Syrian refugees. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 23 (4), 735-760.
Amos, S., Barnes, K., Bilbeisi, T., Boudreaux, J., El-Oqlah, E., Ghazal Aswad, N., Gott, D., Hamilton, R., Hernandez, T., Koehn, C., Nordstrom, S., Shivers, A., Snowden, T., & Tabrizi, H.* (2020). She embodied: A materialized collective. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 11(2), 34-57. (authors contributed equally, authors here appears in alphabetical order).
Ghazal Aswad, N. (2019). Biased neutrality: The symbolic construction of the Syrian refugee
in The New York Times. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36(4), 357-375.
Ghazal Aswad, N. (2019). Portrayals of endangered species in advertising: Exercising
intertextuality to question the anthropocentric lens. Environmental Communication,
13(1), 118-134.
Ghazal Aswad, N. (2018). Exploring charismatic leadership: A comparative analysis of the
rhetoric of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Presidential Studies Quarterly, 49(1), 56-74.
Ghazal Aswad, N., Al-Saleh, Y., & Taleb, H. (2013). Clean energy awareness campaigns in
the UAE: An awareness promoter’s perspective. International Journal of Innovation
and Knowledge Management in the Middle East and North Africa, 2(2), 131-156.
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Ferroukhi, R., Ghazal Aswad, N., Androulaki, S., Hawila, D. & Mezher, T. (2013).
Renewable energy in the GCC: Status, challenges and drivers. International Journal
of Energy Sector Management, 7(1), 84-112.
Ghazal Aswad, N., Vidican, G. & Samulewicz, D. (2011). Creating a knowledge-based
economy in the United Arab Emirates: Realizing the unfulfilled potential of women in
the science, technology, and engineering fields. The European Journal of Engineering
Education, 36(6), 559-570.
Samulewicz, D., Vidican, G. & Ghazal Aswad, N. (2012). Barriers to pursuing careers in
science, technology, and engineering for women in the United Arab Emirates. Journal
of Gender, Technology and Development, 16(2), 125-152.
Ghazal Aswad, N., Vidican, G. & Samulewicz, D. (2011). Assessing the impact of socio-
economic inequities on college enrollment: Emerging differences in the United Arab
Emirates. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 33(5), 459-471.
Books and Book Chapters
