Wallace S. Golding

Wallace S. Golding (he/him) is a rhetorical historian and critic of race and reparative justice and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication. He also holds a graduate minor in African American Studies. Wallace studies the evolution of activists' political languages as they have sought to critique dominant understandings of citizenship and belonging, define their identities, and advocate change in democratic practice and policy. His dissertation investigates the rhetorical history of Black reparations advocacy from emancipation to the present.

Wallace teaches courses in public speaking and writing, rhetorical criticism and theory, public policy communication, and visual rhetoric. In the past, he has served as a peer leader for CMN 111/112 (Oral & Written Communication I/II) and as President of the Communication Graduate Student Association. In fall 2022, he helped launch the Speaking Center, a pilot student-support partnership between the Department of Communication and University Library that provided free presentation and public speaking support to Illinois students. He managed the Center and its staff until May 2024, when it was formalized as the Speakers Workshop. He currently serves as the Workshop's Lead Graduate Coordinator.

A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Wallace received his B.A. in English from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (2018) and M.A. in Communication from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2020). His scholarship has appeared in journals such as Rhetoric & Public Affairs and Communication and Democracy and has received awards such as the Robert Bostrom Young Scholar Award from the Southern States Communication Association, the Nichols-Ehninger Award from the National Communication Association’s Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division, the Robert Gunderson Award from NCA’s Public Address Division, and other divisional awards from regional and national conferences.