March 10, 2011

Student receives top paper award at the Undergraduate Research Scholars Conference

Communication major Amy Madden ’11 received a conference’s top awardfor her analysis of gay rights themes in the music of Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert.

Amy Madden ’11, a communication major, received the Top Student Paper award at the Western States Communication Association Undergraduate Research Scholars Conference, held February 19, 2011 in Monterey, California.

Madden’s winning paper was titled, “Adam Lambert’s ‘For Your Entertainment’ and Lady Gaga’s ‘Alejandro’ Show Support of Gay Rights: A Metaphorical and Ideological Critique.” The paper placed second out of a number of selectively accepted papers. The organizer of the conference, Michelle Holling, praised the paper’s theoretical complexity.

Madden attributed her success to supportive and encouraging communication faculty members, such as Mitch Reyes and Belinda Stillion Southard.

“I would not have won this award without Belinda Stillion Southard,” Madden said. “She made sure her students grasped numerous rhetorical theories, and that is why I won—knowledge of rhetorical theory beyond what was expected of an undergraduate.”

Three other communication students and one recent alumnus also presented research papers at the conference, all of which emerged from Stillion Southard’s spring 2010 Rhetorical Criticism course: Zoe Hovland ’13, Megan Morin ’13, Natasha Quamily ’11, and Lee Yang BA ’10.

Madden, a member of the track and field team, is currently at work on her senior thesis, which is similarly related to ideology and music videos. 

 

**Camille Tapia ’11 contributed to this story