VPA Professor Receives Early Career Award for Exceptional Scholarly Ability

Lyndsay Michalik Gratch

Lyndsay Michalik Gratch, assistant teaching professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies (CRS), is the recipient of the 2019 Janice Hocker Rushing Early Career Award from the Southern States Communication Association (SSCA). The award honors SSCA members who have demonstrated exceptional scholarly ability through research and publication early in their academic careers.

Gratch’s research and creative work focuses on the intersections of communication, digital culture, adaptation studies and performance studies. Specifically, she writes about digital adaptation as both process and product, focusing on adaptations of online content and how these forms of digital adaptation (e.g. memes, gifs, videos and images) function as communication, performance and identity construction.

In the CRS department, Gratch teaches courses in digital culture, communication and performance studies, including Remix Culture, Performance Studies, Digital Performance in Everyday Life, Rhetoric of Film and Frontiers of Communication.