Profile for Brandon Anderson

Research and publishing

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 across contexts. My most substantial project interrogates the persuasive appeal and durability of anti-nuclear discourses, through analyses of a collection of texts connected to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington. In a peer-reviewed edited volume titled Networked Argument, I contributed a chapter that analyzes the ways in which local community-led advocacy challenged governmental expertise. A related essay that analyzes the production of “nuclear memory” through tours of the Hanford B Reactor is a central component of a book manuscript that interrogates the discursive implications of Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s 75-year relationship with southeastern Washington. Additionally, a co-authored book chapter that interrogates Tim Kaine’s vice-presidential campaign discourse appears in an edited volume centering on gender and race in the 2016 campaign.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Anderson, R. B. (2020) Challenging a culture of secrecy: Investigating the emergence of “antenarrative storytelling” in community responses to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. In C. Winkler (Ed.). Networking Argument. Routledge.

Boser, B. L., & Anderson, R. B. (2018) America, meet your new stepdad: Tim Kaine and subordinate masculinity. In C. Kray, H. Mandell, & T. Carroll (Eds.). Nasty Women and Bad Hombres: Historical Reflections on the 2016 Presidential Election.

Anderson, R. B. (2018). Stories of origin: Recovering atomic histories in the “noisy” nuclear culture of Richland Washington. In R. Lake (Ed.), Recovering Argument. Taylor & Francis.

Anderson, R. B. (2011). Justice Stevens and the First Amendment. In C.R. Smith (Ed.), A First Amendment profile of the Supreme Court. (51-66). Newark: University of Delaware Press.

Smith, C. R., & Anderson, R. B. (2011). 9/11 and the ensuing restrictions on civil liberties. In C. R. Smith (Ed.), Silencing the opposition: How the U.S. Government suppressed freedom of expression during major crises. (271-292). New York: SUNY Albany Press.

Additional Publications

Anderson, R. B., (2017, October 9). Purifying strategies and the confederate diaspora. In Media Res: A media commons project.

Anderson, R. B., (2015). [Review of the book Gambling with the myth of the American dream, by A. M. Duncan]. Central States Communication Association Newsletter.

Anderson, R. B., (2008). Same-sex marriage and the First Amendment. In C. Smith (Ed.), The First Amendment and religion: A report of the center for First Amendment Studies (28-34). Published on the Center for First Amendment Studies at California State University, Long Beach website: http://www.firstamendmentstudies.org/wp/pdf/1st_media_ch4.pdf

Anderson, R. B., (2007). The Internet and the First Amendment. In C. Smith (Ed.), The First Amendment and the media: A report of the center for First Amendment Studies (29-35). Published on the Center for First Amendment Studies at California State University, Long Beach website: http://www.firstamendmentstudies.org/wp/pdf/1st_religion_ch4.pdf