English, Summer 2026

From global humanitarian vaccination campaigns to climate advocacy, the figure of the child has long been central to making rhetorics of science “matter” to the public. My dissertation explores this close and storied rhetorical connection and, specifically, the complexity that arises as children and young people themselves are increasingly participating in public discourse about scientific ideas rather than just serving as symbols in adults’ arguments. By moving between historical cases and contemporary ones, I seek to make sense of how lineages of rhetorical use of youth and children to make scientific arguments intersect with contemporary young rhetors’ efforts to participate and enact change in public science discourses. Building on scholarship in interdisciplinary youth and childhood studies, and rhetorics of science (including environmental rhetorics and rhetorics of health and medicine), Poster Children and Prophets attempts to historicize the current moment, where young people’s rhetorics are increasingly feasible, visible, and public.